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THE FOOD PROBLEM 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

MEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCiriTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 



VERNON, KELLOGG 

of the United States Food Administration, and the 

Commission for Relief in Belgium; and 

Professor in Stanford University, 

California 

AND 

ALONZO E. TAYLOR 

of the United States Food Administration, and 

Exports Administrative Board; and 

Professor in the University of 

Pennsylvania 



WITH A PREFACE BY 
HERBERT HOOVER 

United States Food Administrator, and Chairman of the 
Commission for Relief in Belgium 



^tm fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

All rights reserved 









Copyright, 1917 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and clectrotyped. Published November, 1917. 



NOV -8 1917 



©Cl.A47(v98l 



PREFACE 

Today the war has entered a phase in which food 
dominates the economics, strategy and statesman- 
ship, not only of the countries at war but of neutrals 
as well. The Allies are blockading Germany, and 
its population is living in an era of food control 
hitherto undreamed of. The adjacent neutrals are 
under many restraints and pressures to yield their 
food to either side and are striving with every re- 
source to protect their vital supplies. The Germans 
are trying to starve the Allies by sinking their sup- 
plies at sea. All are desperately trying to maintain 
production and reduce consumption. In conse- 
quence food problems in balancing vegetable and 
animal production, in imports, exports, and price 
controls, in protein, fat and carbohydrate content, 
are all silhouetted against a background of destruc- 
tion and tragedy. 

The American people as a nation and as individ- 
uals are face to face with a great special problem 
in connection with the whole war problem the solu- 
tion of which they have undertaken in common with 
their Allies. A failure to solve this problem with 
its thousand complexities will certainly involve a 



VI PREFACE 

failure to solve the war problem in the only way 
we and the civilized world must have it solved. 

From three years of contact with this problem of 
food some phases of it perhaps not too familiar to 
casual students of food regulation are very clear 
to me. These parts, or special features, are mani- 
fest from any examination, however casual, of the 
endeavours and experience of the countries engaged 
with the problem. 

Any control of prices or distribution is the lesser 
of evils; a fight against something worse. And any 
form of control leads into economic reactions that 
are disconcerting. Another feature is the great 
role which what may be termed the psychology of 
food supply plays in the situation. However care- 
fully national food supply may be adjusted, from 
the point of view of the physiology of nutrition and 
from that of nutritional economics, yet no mere 
sufficiency of the needed calories and balanced pro- 
tein, fats and carbohydrate content in the ration will 
necessarily make it a satisfactory one. People of 
different kinds, with different traditions and habits 
of food use, must have, in some measure at least, the 
particular kinds of food they are used to. They 
eat more effectively, one may say, the kinds of food 
they like than the kinds they do not like. Taste 
and appetite must be consulted and satisfied in some 
degree. 



PREFACE Vll 

Another observation that experience, especially in 
Belgium, brings clearly to my mind is that famine 
does not occur according to popular ideas. In a 
country on a food supply below normal necessity 
all the people do not suffer in the same measure, 
nor die at the same time. The rich continue to live, 
despite any rigour in division; the poor get weak, 
and weaker, and die — of something else than fam- 
ine. They die of tuberculosis; they die of epidemic 
disease; they die of whatever it is that finds fertile 
soil for its fatal growth among a people weakened 
by mal-nutrition or under-nutrition. The imme- 
diate factor in famine is the death rate, from what- 
ever determining cause. This death rate is the 
measure of the intensity of weakening, and it does 
not necessarily depend exclusively upon the amount 
of food that is available. 

Another impressive observation brought out by 
food difificulties is that of our intimate dependence 
on our domestic animals. We are likely to think 
first of the supply of cereals, and, indeed, it must be 
admitted that bread is the very basis of the food 
supply of a people. But we do not sufficiently real- 
ize the equally critical importance of maintenance of 
our domestic animals in a period of food shortage. 
We cannot even raise our own young without them. 
Nor if a nation is robbed of its animals can you 
keep the death rate of that nation down to normal 



VIU PREFACE 

by simple importation of animal products. Hence 
one of the greatest problems in a beleaguered nation 
is that of the preservation of its herds. 

The reduction of the herds has future as well as 
immediate grave consequences. Europe today is 
cutting into its capital stock of food animals. That 
means that, though Europe may be able to increase 
at once its production of carbohydrate and can sup- 
ply more animal food at the moment, its after-war 
problems in protein and fats will be doubled. This 
situation must have a great reaction upon our own 
agriculture. Europe will depend on America for 
years to come for a supply of animal products. The 
great present stimulation of wheat growing in the 
United States by guaranteeing minimum prices may 
yet have some of the characters of a national calam- 
ity. Indeed it may be questionable whether we 
should not in our own country, not only for our own 
sake but for the sake of supplying our hungry 
friends of Europe, encourage now the production of 
animals rather than restrict too largely our encour- 
agement to the production of wheat. We are actu- 
ally, at the present time, reducing our capital of live 
stock in proportion to our growth of population. It 
will be easier for us, just as it will for Europe, to re- 
cover lost wheat acreage than the lost herds. We 
shall find an era after the war when Europe will 
produce more food grains by virtue of the reduction 



PREFACE IX 

of demand for fodder grains — and we shall have 
less demand for export of food grains and a tre- 
mendous demand for animal products. It requires 
that we begin now to meet this readjustment by- 
laying the foundations for larger herds. One par- 
tial substitute for animals may be found by increas- 
ing the supply of vegetable fats, and in this lies 
much of the world's hopes. 

All these are only a few phases of the great food 
problem before us. Professors Kellogg and Taylor 
have attempted in this book to set out the character 
and scope of the food problem as it now immediately 
concerns us, and to indicate the possible and most 
promising methods of its solution. The United 
States Food Administration, in close co-operation 
with all the people of our land, is making a gigantic 
effort along these lines. 

Herbert Hoover. 



INTRODUCTION 

THE INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM 

Food is always more or less of a problem in every 
phase of its production, handling and consumption. 
It is a problem with every farmer, every trans- 
porter and seller, every householder. It is a prob- 
lem with every town, state and nation. And now, 
very conspicuously, it is a problem with three great 
groups of nations, namely, the Allies, the Central 
Empires and the Neutrals; in a word, it is a great 
international problem. 

If food is a problem in the normal times of 
peace how much more seriously must it be one in 
the abnormal times of war; and, above all, of such 
a world war as the present. In this particular war 
time, indeed, it is acutely true that food is a great 
and pressing problem; one of enormous impor- 
tance, its solution bearing heavily on the whole 
solution of the war. Only seven years ago M. 
Bloch, the great Russian banker, wrote : " That is 
the future of war — not fighting, but famine; not 
the slaying of men, but the bankruptcy of nations, 

xi 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

and the breaking up of the whole social organiza- 
tion of the nations." 

The future of war, as written about by M. Bloch 
seven years ago, is the present of war today. Not 
that fighting and the slaying of men are lessened. 
Only the Napoleonic and the Thirty Years' Wars 
approach today's war in the terrible losses of human 
life; and too great a drain on the human life of 
any one or several of the nations engaged may be 
the deciding factor in the war's conclusion. But on 
the whole, and as matters stand today, that part of 
M. Bloch's prophecy referring to the predominant 
influence of the food problem in modern war is 
thoroughly borne out by the facts. Despite the 
fearful and fatal struggling of an incredible number 
of men, consuming inconceivable quantities of muni- 
tions and using such amazing methods of fighting 
as were beyond even the fantastic imaginings of 
the romancers of a decade ago, the national and 
international phases of the food and general eco- 
nomic problem are the predominant features of the 
war situation today. 

Now we of America are hurling ourselves into 
the thick of this struggle at exactly the time of both 
military, economic and food crisis. We are volun- 
tarily taking up part, and, in truth, the greater part, 
of the burden of solving, if it be soluble — and it 
must be, and is — this tremendous problem of food 



INTRODUCTION XUl 

for the Allied world. The food problem of today 
of our nation, therefore, has as its most conspicuous 
phase an international character. What is the prob- 
lem in detail? What are the general conditions of 
its solution? What are the immediate and par- 
ticular conditions which especially concern us, and 
are within our power to afifect ? And, finally, what 
are we actually doing to meet our problem ? 

These circumstances and queries just outlined are 
those that give special occasion for the writing and 
publication at this moment of this book. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface v 

Introduction: The International Problem . . xi 



PART I. THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION 

chapter page 

I The Food Situation of the Western Allies 

and the United States ...... 3 

II Food Administration ....... 19 

III How England, France and Italy Are Con- 

trolling AND Saving Food 38 

IV Food Control in Germany, and Its Lessons 71 



PART 11. THE TECHNOLOGY OF FOOD USE 

V The Physiology of Nutrition 103 

VI The Sociology of Nutrition 139 

VII The Sociology of Nutrition (Continued) . 167 

VIII Grain and Alcohol 197 

Conclusion: Patriotism and Food • • « • • 210 



PART I 
THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 



CHAPTER I 

THE FOOD SITUATION" OF THE WESTERN ALLIES 
AND THE UNITED STATES 

We have joined ourselves, in effect if not in 
signed compact, with the Allies in a tremendous war 
task. The men of most of these Allies, the men of 
England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy and Bel- 
gium, are fighting ; they are not on the farms. But 
even in peace times these nations looked to us for 
help in making up the regular annual difference be- 
tween their food production and their food needs; 
normally these six countries, taken together, produce 
but sixty per cent of the grains necessary for their 
bread. We have always been their greatest and 
most reliable granary, food store and meat shop. 
And now, with their production notably lessened, we 
are almost their only one. The grain of Russia can- 
not come out. The food of Bulgaria, Roumania 
and Serbia belongs to the Central Powers. Aus- 
tralia and India are much farther away than ever 
before, what with submarines and an available sup- 
ply of ships so small that no ship must travel one 

3 



4 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

sea-mile farther than absolutely necessary. And the 
European neutrals, caught between two threatening 
fires, must divide their little available surplus of 
meat and dairy products between Germany and Eng- 
land. Of cereals they have, of course, no surplus, 
but rather an aching void, and, therefore, they, too, 
must come to us with appeals for the satisfaction 
of their needs. 

America then has the immediate and very great, 
but not impossible, task in the general division of 
war labours among the members of the Allied 
group, of playing a predominant part in insuring a 
sufficient and regular supply of food for the main- 
tenance of the great field armies of our fighting 
Allies, and of their no less great armies of working 
men and women in the war industries, and finally, 
of their women and children at home. This main- 
tenance of the food supplies of the Western Allies is 
an absolute necessity, second to no other, for the 
successful prosecution of the war. Men continu- 
ously hungry cannot fight or work; nor will men 
with starving families continue to fight if they can 
feed their families by stopping fighting. 

Let us then examine a little in detail the food 
situation of the Allies and the United States, even 
going to that dangerous extreme, for a writer hop- 
ing to be read, of using a few figures. For if we 
limit ourselves simply to a generalized statement 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 5 

of the condition and need we cannot point out in 
any precise terms just what we must do, and how 
do it, to meet our duty in this matter as a nation and 
as individuals. 

Bread has not infrequently been referred to as 
the staff of life. But it really is. We of the Re- 
lief Commission found it so in feeding Belgium. 
The loudest call of the people, their principal 
anxiety, and our first care, all converged on wheat. 
The German experience, as well as the Belgian one, 
has shown that a dietetic regimen for a semi-starv- 
ing people is strong or weak, appeasing or danger- 
ous, in proportion to the bread it contains. If the 
bread ration is normal, or sufficient, much repres- 
sion or substitution can be used in the case of the 
other foods. Thus, considered either from the 
standpoint of physiology or psychology, seeing to 
the bread supply is the matter of first importance in 
the case of peoples living on short rations and get- 
ting occasional glimpses into the abyss of starvation. 

The cereals, then, should have first consideration 
in the analysis of the Allied food situation. And 
all the cereals should be considered, not only those 
more strictly to be called bread-grains, but also 
those chiefly used as feed-grains for animals; first, 
because in a pinch such as the present one, a much 
larger use than usual of the feed-grains can be made 
for human consumption by mixing flour made from 



6 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

them with wheat flour for the bread, and, second, 
because on the availability of the feed-grains rests 
the production of meat, animal fats and dairy prod- 
ucts which, with sugar, are the other staples of diet. 

The annual pre-war production of the cereals, 
wheat, corn, oats, barley and rye, of the Western 
Allies (the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and 
Italy) averaged, taking the three harvests imme- 
diately preceding the war as basis, about one and 
a half billion bushels annually. The annual con- 
sumption in the same period of these peoples 
amounted to nearly two and a quarter billions. 
But their production this year, because of lessened 
man-power available for the farms and consequent 
lessened acreage — in France the acreage is les- 
sened by this and by the actual loss of land to 
the Germans by one-third — and lessened yield per 
acre — also partly because of absence of fertilizer — 
will fall short of the pre-war average by half a 
million bushels. In France, indeed, the wheat pro- 
duction this year is hardly more than one-half the 
normal. 

The situation as regards the production of meat, 
animal fats and dairy products is an equally serious 
one. The herds of the Allies have been seriously 
cut into since the war began by the lessened produc- 
tion and import (because of shipping shortage) of 
feed grains and fodder for their support, and by 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 7 

the necessity of eating into the capital stock to meet 
the pressing demands for an increased ration of 
meat and animal fat of millions of men turned from 
light or sedentary work to the severe physical exer- 
tion of the army or the war factories. This reduc- 
tion of the herds for these causes means a lessened 
reproduction of animals, with consequent increased 
lessening of the natural replacement of the herds 
themselves, creating thus the proverbial vicious 
circle. 

The cattle, sheep and hogs of the Western Allies 
in 19 1 3 were over a hundred million head. At the 
beginning of this year they were estimated at about 
seventy-five million. If the decline in France con- 
tinues through all this year at the rate followed since 
the beginning of the war, France will have but 
twenty-six million head at the end of the year, as 
compared with thirty-eight million before the war. 
She has lost i6}^ per cent of her cattle, 33 per cent 
of her sheep and 38 per cent of her swine since the 
war began. And yet she fights, and gloriously ! Is 
there any doubt that we shall help feed her ? 

In 191 3 the Western Allies imported one and a 
half bilHon pounds of animal fat (in terms of fat 
content). In normal times the dairy fat supply to 
the Allies arose to a large extent from Russia, now 
cut off, and from Scandinavia, Holland, Denmark, 
and Switzerland, the suppli-es from which are now 



8 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

going, under German pressure, largely to Germany. 

Finally, as to sugar there is also a serious situa- 
tion to face. Before the war the Western Allies 
were consuming annually about three million tons 
and producing considerably less than half of it. 
France, Italy and Belgium indeed produced a little 
more than they consumed, but England, with an 
annual consumption of two million tons produced 
no sugar at all. However, the large balance of 
production over consumption of Germany and Aus- 
tria-Hungary, and the smaller one of Russia, 
France, Italy, Belgium and Holland, sufficed to sup- 
play a large part, seventy per cent to be specific, of 
England's needs. She found the rest in Java, 
Mauritius, the West Indies (excluding Cuba) and 
South America to the extent of i6% per cent; in 
Cuba and the United States, 8 per cent; and from 
other scattering sources 5^ per cent. 

As a result of the war the European production 
of sugar has been greatly lessened. For this year, 
the total crop is estimated, on the basis of the 
acreage planted, at little more than four million 
tons. This is less than one-half the crop of 
19 1 3-14. The effect of this decrease and of the 
war situation generally is to cut off almost entirely 
England's supply from Europe, for the other Allies, 
France, Belgium and Italy, from being a little more 
than self-supporting as to sugar, are reduced now 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 9 

to calling on the outside world for approximately 
two-thirds of their needs, so radically has their 
production been cut down. 

So much for a swift examination of the actual 
present situation of our Western European Allies. 
They need help, and need it badly, and it can come 
only from us. What then is our own situation? 
In what position are we to meet the need ? 

The United States is the greatest food-producing 
country in the world. We have a larger absolute 
acreage in crops than any other nation, except possi- 
bly China. This acreage (320,000,000 acres) is 
nearly equal to that of the peace-time acreage of all 
Europe, excluding Russia (354,150,000 acres). 
Our total annual production of cereals (bread and 
feed-grains together) averaged four billion and eight 
hundred million bushels (average of crops of 191 1, 
19 1 2 and 1913), while the total peace-time average 
for all the European countries together, except Rus- 
sia, is almost exactly the same. 

Similarly, figures might be given to show our 
enormous production of meat and animal products : 
last year, for example, it was over twenty billions 
of pounds. But there is no especial significance in 
these comparisons beyond that of their indication 
of our interesting magnitude as a food-producing 
land. 

What will be more to the point, and is really 



10 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

needed, is a comparison of our production with our 
consumption. However impressive the figures of 
our output, they do not so much interest the world 
outside, nor in particular do they carry any comfort 
to our Allies, if there is not indicated in them the 
fact that we produce more than we consume. We 
are a large nation, and a young, vigorous and grow- 
ing one. Is our appetite and our need of food so 
great that we eat all we raise? And if we do not, 
do we leave uneaten enough to make up that de- 
ficiency between the imperative needs of our Allies 
and their production? In the precise answer to 
these questions we find our problem stated in exact 
terms. Hence we must again use a few figures. 

Whatever our annual production has been, the 
important thing at the moment is the production of 
191 7. Fortunately, the crops for this year are now 
so assured that figures can be given, with close 
accuracy, of the amount of each kind of cereal we 
may expect to harvest, or have already harvested 
this year. (The figures given are the government 
estimates of September.) Our wheat crop will be 
about 668,000,000 bushels; our corn crop about 
3,248,000; our oats about 1,533,332,000; our barley 
204,000,000 and our rye 56,000,000. Roughly, a 
total of five billion seven hundred million bushels 
of bread and feed grains. To the great advantage 
of ourselves and our Allies, this is a crop, taken as 



THE FOOD PROBLEM II 

a total, materially larger than our annual average. 
The excess, however, is composed of feed-grains and 
not bread-grains. It is in particular our bumper 
crops of corn and oats this year that run up the 
total. Our wheat crop is, as a matter of fact, be- 
low the average, which is about 800,000,000 bushels. 

Our average normal annual consumption of wheat 
has been 590,304,000; of corn, 2,653,698,000; of 
oats, 1,148,713,000; of barley, 178,829,000; and of 
rye, 35,866,000; a total of 4,607,410,000. 

Thus, if we continue to consume our cereals as 
in pre-war time, we should have out of this year's 
crop a surplus of about eighty million bushels of 
wheat and one billion bushels of the other cereals 
taken together. 

If we compare now the actual figures (obtained 
from official sources, and as nearly accurate as may 
be had) of the probable cereal production of the 
Western Allies for the year, together with those of- 
their normal consumption, with the figures just 
quoted, we shall see clearly and exactly the situa- 
tion. 

The production of the Allies this year is closely 
estimated as follows : Wheat, 393,770,000 bushels; 
other cereals, 567,016,000 bushels. Their normal 
consumption is: wheat, 974,485,000; other cereals, 
1.239,791,000. 

That they may have a normal consumption until 



12 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the next harvest, therefore, they must import in the 
next twelve months a total of about 580,000,000 
bushels of wheat and 673,000,000 bushels of other 
cereals. Of this they can probably obtain from 
Canada (on basis of the Canadian crop estimates 
for this year, and the known Canadian normal con- 
sumption) about 120,000,000 bushels of wheat and 
119,000,000 bushels of other cereals. This leaves 
them to obtain from us, if possible, about 460,- 
000,000 bushels of wheat and 554,000,000 bushels 
of other cereals. 

Comparing these figures of Allied needs from 
us with the figures of our probable export surplus 
on basis of normal consumption, we find ourselves 
face to face with an easy solution — as far as 
grain goes; grain ships are another matter — of 
the situation as regards the '' other cereals," of 
which we have more than enough to meet the neces- 
sity, but with what, at first glance, seems an im- 
possible situation as regards wheat — for which 
read bread, with all of its significance as the very 
fundamental, the indispensable, basis of the daily 
ration. How are we — and our Allies — to meet 
this " impossible situation " ? 

But the trouble is not with wheat alone. We have 
already pointed out in general terms the serious 
situation of the Allies as to the other staples, meat, 
fats, dairy products and sugar. We do not want to 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 3 

load this paper with figures and hence shall attempt 
no such detailed analysis of the situation as regards 
these staples, as that just undertaken of the cereals. 
But a few statements will lend some definiteness to 
the situation. 

The cutting down of the meat production of the 
Allies and their limitation as to import from other 
sources than American ones, is revealed by the 
enormous growth of American meat exports, most 
of which have gone to the Western Allies, since the 
beginning of the war. Our annual average for the 
three years just before the war was 493,848,000 
pounds; for the year ending June 30, 19 16, it was 
1,339,193,000. These figures do not include pork 
products, the exports of which have gone up from 
a billion pounds a year before the war to a billion 
and a half pounds for the year ending June 30, 
1916. 

This demand for meat will not lessen as the war 
goes on; it will increase. And it will continue for 
some years after the war, because the reduction of 
the European herds cannot be made good in a day, 
nor in a year, after peace comes. 

This growing scarcity for native animals and 
animal products among our Allies, and their de- 
pendence on us, is evidenced also by the export 
figures for dairy products. Our annual average 
export of butter for the three years before the war 



14 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

was four and a half million pounds, of cheese three 
and three-quarter millions, and of condensed milk 
about eighteen millions. For the year ending June 
30, 19 1 7, it was: butter, nearly twenty-seven mil- 
lion pounds ; cheese sixty-six million ; and condensed 
milk, nearly two hundred and sixty million pounds ! 
Finally, another word as to sugar. We have seen 
that the war has greatly reduced the production of 
France, Italy and Belgium (England, of course, 
produces none) and has forced all the Allies away 
from most of their usual sources of supply and made 
them turn for help to the United States and to our 
own usual sources of import. For we have never 
produced in our own country and possessions (the 
Philippines, Hawaii and Porto Rico) much more 
than half the amount consumed by us. We have 
relied on Cuba to make up our deficiency. Our an- 
nual consumption is about four million tons, while 
the normal total production of the United States 
and its possessions, Cuba and the other West Indies, 
in pre-war times was about four and a half million 
tons. Fortunately there has been, since the begin- 
ning of the war, an increase in production in these 
countries, due to the spur of the increased European 
demand, of about a million tons. But from the 
present total the Allies need to draw at least a mil- 
lion and three-quarter tons; perhaps two millions 
this year. In other words, we and the Allies need 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 1 5 

to draw about six million tons from sources pro- 
ducing about five and a half millions; a problem 
in arithmetic — and eating ! 

We have outlined one phase, the international 
one, of the food problem. But there is another. It 
is the national, or domestic one. This ties up 
closely, of course, with the wider aspect of the 
problem. Indeed it is chiefly immediately caused by 
the attempt at provisioning the Allies, in the uncon- 
trolled manner in which the attempt has been made 
from the beginning of the war up to now. The 
more nearly the Allies — and the European neu- 
trals, with their underground pipes into Germany 
— have come to being fed from America, in the 
unregulated way so far in vogue, the more acute 
and larger has grown the domestic problem. It 
reveals itself most readily, perhaps, by a simple in- 
spection of home prices for home products and a 
comparison of them as they stand today with them 
as they stood before the war. 

Taking an average of the retail prices for the 
five years just before the war as a basis, the prices 
of various familiar foods on July 15, 19 17, showed 
the following increases: cornmeal 115 per cent; 
flour no per cent; potatoes no per cent; lard 81% 
per cent; bacon 70 per cent; pork chops 66 per 
cent; round steak 65 per cent; ham 64 per cent; 
sugar 53 per cent; sirloin steak 51 per cent; rib 



1 6 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

roast 47 per cent; hens 41 per cent; milk 27% per 
cent; butter 26^ per cent; eggs 24% per cent. 

But the whole story is not told by such a simple 
comparison. The rate of increase has not been an 
even one. It was nearly a year after the war be- 
gan before a permanent tendency for prices to 
rise asserted itself, and even then the advances for 
most commodities were rather small. Wheat and 
flour, and hence bread, however, were notable excep- 
tions. But, by July, 191 6, the wholesale prices, 
as compared with those of 1914, show that almost all 
the most important commodities cost from fifty to 
one hundred per cent more than in 19 14. Since 
then the prices have continued to advance, and very 
notably in the successive months of this year. For 
example, the retail price of sirloin steak has ad- 
vanced from 27.6 cents a pound on January 15, 
19 1 7, to 32.8 cents on June 15 ; of bacon from 29.6 
cents to 42.5 cents; of ham from 30.6 cents to 39.1 
cents; of lard from 21.4 to 28 cents; flour (Ys 
bbl. bag) from $1,369 to $1,973 > cornmeal 4.0 to 5.5 
cents; potatoes (peck) from 58.7 to 96.0 cents; 
sugar 8.0 to 9.3 cents. 

The price of wheat per bushel was $1,071 on 
August I, 1916, and on August i, 1917, $2,289; 
corn advanced from 79.4 cents to $1,966; barley 
from 59.3 cents to $1,145 5 ^Y^ 83.4 cents to $1.781 ; 
potatoes from 95.4 cents to $1,708. That is, for 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 1 7 

each of these important commodities, with the single 
exception of white potatoes, the prices have more 
than doubled within the last year. Where are they 
going? When are they going to stop? 

These terrible present prices of all commodities 
weigh heavily upon the consumers, especially on 
those who are on a monthly salary or a day wage; 
and these constitute the greater proportion of the 
population. It is true there have been advances in 
wages. In some cases, several successive advances. 
But these altogether seldom amount to more than 
twenty-five per cent, and therefore they are not at 
all in proportion to the increased cost of foodstuffs. 
These exaggerated prices have aroused general 
alarm and created wide-spread belief that serious 
trouble is likely to confront us in the coming winter 
unless relief is arranged for. 

There may be — and undoubtedly are — several 
causes contributing to this excessive price increase, 
but the fundamental cause is certainly the unregu- 
lated way in which the extraordinary demand from 
our Allies and the European neutrals for all essen- 
tial commodities has been met. One of the con- 
tributing causes has been '' hoarding,'' either by the 
householder buying an unusual amount ahead of 
his needs, or, and much more seriously, by the 
large purchases of speculators, and the holding of 
these purchases against the inevitable increase in 



1 8 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

price. These purchases and holdings themselves 
help to make the increase inevitable. There has 
been, too, undoubtedly, a certain amount of co- 
operation among men handling certain commodities 
to the deliberate end of advancing prices and thus 
increasing profits. 

One part of our domestic problem, then, is that 
of effecting by one means or another a decrease and 
stabilization of prices. This presupposes a correc- 
tive for hoarding and manipulation ; for " profiteer- 
ing," generally. Another part — which is also a 
part of the international problem — is the organiza- 
tion of our food production and use so as to create 
the surplus needed for supplying our Allies, and 
the regulation, in connection with the Allied gov- 
ernments, of the supplying of this surplus in a man- 
ner so as not to force up too dangerously our home 
prices. Heretofore the Allies have made their pur- 
chases in our markets in competition both with each 
other and with the buyers for our own homes. 
And, finally, there is another part, also more inter- 
national than domestic in aspect, which is to create 
an effective check against an over-supply to neu- 
trals — with their dubious connections. Our food 
problem is, thus, after all just one big problem, 
domestic and international at once. 

So far it has been all " problem/' What of the 
"solution '7 



CHAPTER II 

FOOD ADMINISTRATION 

The solution is food conservation; or, better, 
food administration. For food conservation, as a 
term, is sometimes used to denote only that part 
of the general organization, control and economical 
use of food which is chiefly indicated by the last 
phrase; that is, the general technic and details of 
the economic use, preservation, substitution, etc., of 
food in the household, public eating places and re- 
tail shops. The situation involves, however, much 
more than this food conservation, sensu strictu. 
It demands a food conservation of the broadest sort, 
involving administrative, educational, co-operative, 
compelled and voluntary activities of wide diversity 
and application ; in a word, on an intelligent, organ- 
ized, vigorous food administration. Or, as it may 
now be written. Food Administration. 

For the people of this country have called for an 
organized food control, just as the people of Italy, 
France and England each successively saw the 
necessity, called for and were given it — and the 
people in Germany were given it without calling 

19 



20 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

for it. Almost certainly none of these peoples could 
have maintained itself in the war without govern- 
mental food control. And so our people have got, 
as hoped-for solution of their problem, a United 
States Food Administration. What is it? What 
may it do ? What can it do ? What is it doing ? 

On August 8th of this year, just four months 
after our entrance into the war, Congress passed 
the " food control bill " introduced in the House on 
June nth. The delay in passage of the bill was 
chiefly due to a reluctant Senate. On August loth 
President Wilson signed the bill, and on the same day 
appointed Herbert Hoover to be his representative 
as head of the Food Administration with the title of 
Food Administrator. England's food head, at pres- 
ent Lord Rhondda, is officially entitled Food Con- 
troller ; France's administrator, M. Violette, is called 
Ministre du Ravitaillement ; Italy's, Onererole G. 
Canepa, is known as Commissario Approwizione- 
mente. On August 12th Mr. Hoover formally an- 
nounced the policy and general plans of the Food 
Administration. 

It should be interesting and profitable to present 
here a brief analytical summary of the bill. 

Congressman Lever, chairman of the House 
Agricultural Committee, in introducing the bill, de- 
scribed its intent as follows: 

" It aims to facilitate and clear the channels of 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 21 

distribution to prevent hoarding; to prevent wilful 
destruction of necessaries in order to enhance the 
prices or restrict the supply thereof; to eliminate 
injurious speculation; to regulate exchanges and 
boards of trade in order to prohibit undue fluctua- 
tion of prices, unjust market manipulation, or un- 
fair or misleading market quotations; to reduce 
waste, including the power to regulate or completely 
to prohibit the use of cereals in the manufacture of 
alcoholic beverages; and to stimulate production by 
securing the farmer a reasonable profit guaranteed 
by the government, and a free and open market for 
his products, unrestricted by manipulation and un- 
controlled by gambling operations/' 

The act authorizes a governmental control over 
the supply, distribution and movement of all food, 
feeds and fuels, and all machinery, implements and 
equipment required for their actual production. 
Any agency necessary to carry out their control may 
be created; any existing department or agency of 
the government may be used. 

All destruction of food or fuel for the purpose of 
enhancing prices is prohibited ; all wilful waste, all 
hoarding, all monopolization, all discrimination, and 
unfair practices, all unjust charges in handling and 
dealing in food and fuel, and all combining to 
restrict the production, supply or distribution are 
made unlawful. 



22 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

All manufacture, importation, storage and dis- 
tribution can be carried on only by license when the 
President shall deem it essential to institute such 
licensing. Exception to the license requirements 
is made in favour of farmers, co-operative associa- 
tions dealing with products produced by their mem- 
bers, and retail dealers whose business is less than 
$100,000 a year. 

Food, feeds and fuel necessary for the army, 
navy and public service may be requisitioned. 
Hoarded supplies may be seized, sold and dis- 
tributed. The government may purchase, store and 
sell at reasonable prices, wheat, flour, meal, beans 
and potatoes. Factories, packing houses, pipe lines 
and fuel mines may be taken over and operated by 
the government for any time necessary to secure 
adequate supplies for the public service. 

Regulations may be issued to prevent speculation, 
manipulation, enhancement, depression or fluctua- 
tion of prices, and to control the operation of ex- 
changes, boards of trade, and similar organizations 
dealing in food, feeds and fuel. 

For the purpose of stimulating production the 
government may guarantee for a period of not 
longer than eighteen months a price which will in- 
sure the producer a reasonable profit. The price of 
the 19 18 crop of No. i Northern Spring wheat is 
fixed at two dollars per bushel at principal interior 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 2$ 

markets. The importation tariff on food, feeds and 
fuel may be increased if considered necessary to 
prevent undue importation from other countries. 

No foods or feeds shall be used for the produc- 
tion of distilled spirits for beverages. No distilled 
spirits may be imported. All distilled spirits in 
bond or stock are commandeered and any of these 
stocks may be re-distilled to meet the requirements 
of the government in the manufacture of munitions 
and military and hospital supplies. 

Particular powers are given in regard to the pro- 
duction and dealing in coal and coke. Prices may 
be fixed. If these prices are not conformed with, 
the mine or plant and business of the offending pro- 
ducer may be taken over. If deemed necessary the 
producer of coal and coke may be required to sell 
solely to the government, and the government may 
act as the sole dealer in the resale of the supplies. 
The government is authorized to purchase nitrate 
of soda to increase agricultural production in 19 17 
and 1 91 8 and sell this fertilizer for cash. 

In all cases where a commodity or operating plant 
IS requisitioned just compensation is to be made. 

Appropriations are made to carry on the business 
operations authorized in the act, and for the special 
purchase of nitrate of soda, and for the general 
expense of the Food Administration. 

The statutory powers of the Food Administra- 



24 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

tion seem, at first examination, to be all that are 
needed. Their enumeration answers the query: 
what may be done. What can be done is, of course, 
another matter. The Food Administration may 
stimulate production; can it? It may prevent all 
hoarding, manipulation and profiteering; again, can 
it? The answer does not depend on the Food 
Administrator alone. It depends much more, in- 
deed, on the people of the country. We are patriots 
enough to stand up with the right music; to float 
the flag; and to yell when the soldiers go by. We 
are even patriots enough to offer our lives to our 
country. Are we patriots enough to stand without 
flinching when our pockets and appetites are 
touched? We shall see. 

The Food Administration has made a vigorous 
beginning. The long, vexing, injuring delay in the 
passage of the bill was not all lost time. The Food 
Administrator (to be) was getting a good ready. 
He made the beginnings of his volunteer organiza- 
tion; he found temporary quarters, beginning with 
three rooms in a Washington hotel, and moving 
about with his growing staff as eviction followed 
eviction from other temporarily loaned resting 
places. The day after the bill was signed things 
began to happen officially; their beginnings had al- 
ready been made unofficially. 

As wheat — always to be thought of in terms of 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 2$ 

bread — is of first importance, so its consideration 
came first on the program. At this writing, one 
month after the passage of the bill, a '' fair price '' 
of $2.20 a bushel nas been fixed for this year's crop 
by a committee selected by the President, composed 
of producers, wheat handlers, consumers and rep- 
resentatives of labour. Congress had already fixed 
by the terms of the Bill a price of two dollars per 
bushel for the crop of 19 18. It was therefore nec- 
essary that a price not less than that be fixed for 
this year's crop in order to prevent hoarding of 
the 191 7 wheat until next year. 

A great Food Administration Grain Corporation 
and a Food Administration Milling Division have 
been formed to control the handling, purchase, sale, 
distribution and export of wheat and flour. As a 
first and immediate result of the work of these two 
co-operating bodies of the Food Administration, 
flour is today being sold to the consumer at three 
dollars a barrel less than it was before their organi- 
zation, and the producer is getting an increase of 
price for his wheat equivalent to three dollars a 
barrel as interpreted in flour. That is, a middleman 
profiteering of six dollars a barrel has been wiped 
out. 

Licenses are required (as from September i) 
from all operators of elevators and all millers oper- 
ating mills of over one hundred barrels daily ca- 



26 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

pacity. The first regulations put into effect under 
this licensing system were the requirement of fair 
trade practices, and that no wheat or rye should 
be stored in elevators for any one except the Food 
Administration for more than thirty days. Also 
no mill may sell flour for shipment farther ahead 
than thirty days, nor may any mill, except by spe- 
cial permission, accumulate or own more than the 
equivalent, in wheat and flour, of its output of 
thirty days. The object of specific regulation is 
to prevent the public facilities for grain market- 
ing to be used for hoarding or storing for an ad- 
vance. 

In the hands of the Grain Corporation is lodged 
by agreement with the Allies all the export buying 
for them. The buying for neutrals is also con- 
trolled because export licenses can only be had with 
the approval of the Grain Corporation. 

The whole, and the only, purpose of the power 
and activities of the Grain Corporation and the 
Milling Division is to conserve as effectively as pos- 
sible the wheat supply of this country for the use 
primarily of ourselves and Allies. It is intended 
that the American mills should handle a larger part 
of the wheat than before so as to retain the grain 
offal (mill feed) for our dairy cattle, and also re- 
duce the milling cost per barrel of flour by virtue of 
the enlarged production. The miller will be defi- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 2/ 

nitely controlled as to the amount of profit per bar- 
rel which he can make. 

That this is all well understood and agreed to by 
the grain men and millers of the country is shown 
by the passage of the following resolution by a large 
group of grain men representing all phases of the 
industry after a conference with Mr. Hoover and 
other representatives of the Food Administration in 
Washington, on August 15. 

Realizing that the operation of Government control in 
wheat and rye is essential under present war influences 
in order to adequately protect our home supply and fur- 
nish our Allies with the aid we owe, and realizing that 
the establishment of an efficient government plan of op- 
eration means to all of us curtailment of our business 
and to some of us actual retirement from active business 
during such period, we do express our pride in the char- 
acter of service tendered by the grain trade in the sacri- 
fice by these men of ability who are placing their experi- 
ence and energy at the service of their Government, and 
that we approve the general plan of operation as ex- 
plained to us today as being sound, workable and neces- 
sary, and in its general lines it appears to us as being the 
most efficient and just plan of operation which we can 
conceive. 

The great mass of the people in this country will 
be interested primarily in the Food Administration's 
work on wheat and flour from the point of view of 
buyers and consumers of bread. Can bread be 
made cheaper without being made less nutritious and 
palatable? The Food Administration is giving 



28 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

much time and energy to the bread situation. It 
has a special division, manned by a group of busi- 
ness men and food experts, which is giving its whole 
attention to the problem of cheaper bread. A care- 
ful study of the methods of commercial and home 
baking is being made. 

The first result of an investigation of thirty bak- 
eries in or near New York, Philadelphia, Wash- 
ington and Chicago revealed a surprising variation 
in several items of costs in commercial bread-mak- 
ing and distribution. This study shows clearly that 
those bakeries which have standardized their product 
and deliver in large quantities only once a day are 
making bread and distributing it at from one to two 
cents a pound cheaper than those bakeries that make 
many kinds and sizes of wheat bread and deliver in 
small quantities several times a day. 

The investigation is being extended to about 250 
bakeries scattered all over the country, but it is al- 
ready plain that one of the important factors in any 
reduction of the price of bread is that of simplifica- 
tion of baking and economy of delivery. And the 
Food Administration is hard at work with the com- 
mercial bakers of the country trying to effect ar- 
rangements to this end. It has engaged the assist- 
ance of the " chain stores/' and is well on the way 
to seeing a cheaper standard loaf put on the market 
for those who are willing to pay cash and carry the 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 29 

bread home for the sake of a material saving of 
money. 

Another staple which has had the immediate at- 
tention of the Food Administration with swift and 
positive results in the way of control and price re- 
duction, is sugar. The control of sugar presents a 
problem fundamentally different from that pre- 
sented by almost any other commodity because of 
the fact that about fifty per cent of the sugar we use 
is imported. In fact the New York price of sugar 
is based primarily on the conditions of the Cuban 
supply. It is the intention of the Food Administra- 
tion to try to arrange a voluntary agreement with 
the Cuban government and planters to fix a price for 
Cuban sugar in New York that will be satisfactory 
to the Cuban growers and at the same time insure 
a fair price for the consumers of this country. 
There is every reason to believe that such an ar- 
rangement can be effected. 

In the meantime a satisfactory agreement has 
been reached between the Food Administration and 
the sugar beet growers of America — representa- 
tives of all the beet producers of the country par- 
ticipating in this arrangement by voluntary agree- 
ment — by which the sale and distribution of the 
entire beet sugar production of the United States are 
placed in the hands of the Food Administration. 
As a result, all the beet sugar of the country is to 



30 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

be sold at a price not to exceed 7% cents a pound, 
cane basis, at sea-board refining points. The price 
was 9.15 cents but a short time before the arrange- 
ment was made. 

To control the distribution and effect a fair di- 
vision of the sugar from America and its possessions 
and from Cuba and the West Indies, an Interna- 
tional Sugar Committee representing the Allied 
governments and the United States has been formed 
which will have in its hands entire charge of the 
purchase and distribution of all sugar for this and 
the Allied countries. Three of the five members 
of this committee are Americans, one of whom rep- 
resents the Food Administration, and they will act 
as a sub-committee to handle and decide purely 
domestic questions with which the Allied members 
are not concerned. A special committee represent- 
ing the American refiners has also been formed to 
co-operate with the International Committee in the 
distribution of that part of the imported sugar that 
comes to the refineries in the United States. 

The control of the meats and fats situation Is un- 
der way of organization, but any statements regard- 
ing the course of the negotiations would be pre- 
mature at time of this writing (September). 
Many conferences have been held in Washington 
between officials of the Food Administration and 
representatives of the live-stock growers and the 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 3 1 

packers, and carefully elaborated plans are under 
present consideration. The situation is a more 
complex one than that of sugar or even of wheat, 
but some sort of early solution is necessary and will 
be effected. 

Besides the special divisions of the Food Admin- 
istration already referred to giving their whole at- 
tention to the staples, grain, meats and sugar, there 
are well-developed working divisions, headed and 
largely staffed by volunteers, — as are the grain, 
meat and sugar divisions, — devoting their atten- 
tion to wholesale groceries and their distribution; 
to fish, to canned goods, to potatoes, to dairy prod- 
ucts, and to fresh fruit and vegetables. 

All of these are struggling with the general prob- 
lems of monopolization, hoarding, injurious specu- 
lation and manipulation, and distribution, and in ad- 
dition each has its own particular problems peculiar 
to the special commodities and trade in its purview. 
In all cases the work is moving forward on the 
basis of a large degree of co-operation and volun- 
tary agreement on the part of the trade interested. 
Literally scores of conferences have been held be- 
tween representatives of the Food Administration 
and representatives of the trades, and a steady ad- 
vance toward the desired ends of the Administration, 
and the advantage of the people as a whole in their 
great war undertaking has been, and is being, made. 



32 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

The two cardinal principles guiding all this work 
and that are being urged on the producers, traders 
and consumers alike are economy and service, to 
the end that the foodstuffs of the land may be dis- 
tributed as equitably as possible and at the lowest 
prices consistent with justice to all concerned. The 
war — and it is a relentless war — that the Food 
Administration is carrying on in its work with the 
handlers of food is against manipulation and specu- 
lation, against all forms of " profiteering." It is a 
war for the protection of the consumer. At the 
same time the Food Administration is trying to ex- 
tend favour and aid to producers along all lines lead- 
ing to stimulation of production. These include all 
effort possible for the determination and mainte- 
nance of fair prices for the produce of farm, gar- 
den, orchard and factory, and the establishment of 
a regular and stable market. 

There are necessarily other divisions of the Food 
Administration besides the ones devoted to special 
commodities. There is a statistical division, a legal 
division, a transportation division, a division of 
food use and scientific research in food values, a 
division of labour, and one of imports, exports and 
embargo, acting in close connection with the De- 
partments of Agriculture, Commerce and State, 
with a firm grip already on the spiny problem of ex- 
port to European neutrals with its serious corol- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 33 

lary of — let us put it bluntly — export to Ger- 
many. 

There is a states organization division connecting 
directly with a federal food administration in each 
state, directly representing the Food Administra- 
tion. Through these state administrators, who are 
men of demonstrated ability, high standing and in- 
fluence in their respective states, all serving as vol- 
unteers without compensation for the duration of 
the war, there is being developed co-operation and 
effective team work between the central administra- 
tion at Washington and the work in each state with 
the special food problems peculiar to each region. 
These state administrators come to Washington re- 
peatedly to report and confer, and representatives 
from the states organization division go out to the 
various states, so that close touch may be main- 
tained with conditions all over the country. 

Finally there is a large and driving division of 
food conservation, sensu strictu. 

It is this department that connects the Food Ad- 
ministration immediately with all of the people. 
We are all consumers, and food conservation, in its 
special sense, concerns itself primarily with food 
consumption. The primary object of this special 
part of the food conservation campaign is to bring 
about an intelligent voluntary rearrangement of the 
eating habits of our hundred million people so that 



34 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the particular foodstuffs most needed by the Allies 
can be accumulated. This has to be done in the 
face of a normal surplus — which has to be made 
larger — and by a people long accustomed to a food 
use limited chiefly only by its cost. 

To do this it is first necessary to convince our 
people that food is a decisive factor in the war, that 
the strength of our Allies can only be maintained 
by a food provision meeting their minimum neces- 
sity, and that it is our duty and opportunity in this 
war to insure this food supply. Food conservation 
becomes, then, a patriotic service. 

Next, it is necessary to point out how each house- 
hold and public eating-place, and how each individual 
consumer can really act so as to conserve food. 
The details and special efforts centre about three 
principal general propositions: the elimination of 
waste, the substitution of certain foods for others, 
as corn for wheat, poultry for meat, etc., and, 
finally, an actual lessening of unnecessary consump- 
tion. To instruct and enlist the nation the already 
organized forces of the people are brought into 
play. The special help of community centres and 
state organizations, of the public school teachers, 
the churches, the fraternal orders and patriotic so- 
cieties, h^s been enlisted. 

The participation of the churches in the work, 
in particular, is already highly developed. Officially 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 35 

appointed representatives, including some of the 
most prominent men in each of the denominations, 
have met with the Food Administrator and his staff 
in Washington, and after coming to a clear under- 
standing of the situation have tendered the largest 
service of their organizations. Eighteen men repre- 
senting fifteen denominations are continuously in 
Washington with offices in the Food Administration 
buildings giving their whole time to the great cam- 
paign of food conservation appeal and education 
among the forty million church members officially 
represented by them. It is a fine exhibition of the 
patriotism and practical possibilities of the Ameri- 
can churches when appealed to for national service. 

No less important, the active co-operation of the 
women of the country has been obtained. Repre- 
sentatives of all the great national organizations of 
women have come to Washington for repeated con- 
ferences. A general agreement and plan for co- 
operation has been arrived at, and a splendid volun- 
teer staff of women representing various special in- 
terests and activities is giving devoted service to 
the work in the Washington offices of the Food 
Administration. 

A national lecture bureau has been organized, as 
have also numerous State bureaus. Work in home 
economics is being conducted by experts. Simple 
primers and text books and lecture course syllabi 



36 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

for the public schools and colleges have been pre- 
pared and issued. Cards specifying the particular 
measures most available and effective for food- 
saving and wise food use in the homes and public 
eating-places are being sent broadcast, and pledges 
to observe these suggestions are being signed by 
millions of households, hotel, restaurant, dining-car 
and club managers, and individual consumers. 

These pledge signers are enrolled as members of 
the Food Administration, and receive cards of mem- 
bership which they are asked to display in their 
windows, so as to announce their patriotic under- 
taking and thus serve as a good example to others. 

The results of this great campaign are already 
obvious. An actual food-saving, a food conserva- 
tion, is being effected. This is shown concretely by 
interesting statistics recently collected from sixty 
cities that reveal a lessening of the garbage collec- 
tions by about 12 per cent, as compared with those 
of last year. Quite as important, a psychological 
effect is being produced. Food conservation is 
making the war real ; it is inspiring patriotism. It 
offers the opportunity for universal service in a 
great national endeavour; and it is creating this 
service. Incidentally, it may mean much for the 
years after the war; we may get the food-saving 
habit — and the habit of patriotism. 

Another phase of food administration is that of 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 37 

the Stimulation of production. Under the provi- 
sions of the so-called " food survey bill," signed 
on August 10, the Secretary of Agriculture is au- 
thorized to investigate in detail the actual food situ- 
ation in the country and to employ a variety of 
special measures, such as special furnishing of seed, 
demonstrations, and enlarged efforts at education 
for increasing the food production. This w^ork does 
not come under the immediate control of Mr. 
Hoover's organization, but it is a matter in which 
the Food Administration is vitally interested, and 
in which it will take every opportunity to assist 
and to co-operate with the Agricultural Department. 
There has already been a notable response of the 
people to the call for increased production, evidenced 
by the two million or more new back-yard and 
vacant-lot gardens planted this summer. And there 
is plain promise of increased acreage for the 191 8 
crop of grain. The guaranteed minimum price to 
the farmers of $2.00 a bushel for the wheat of the 
19 1 8 crop, fixed by the food control bill — and this 
whether the war ends before the harvest with the 
consequent tumbling in price all over the world, or 
whether it does not — leads experts to estimate that 
our wheat crop of next year will reach a billion 
bushels, weather conditions permitting. 



CHAPTER III 

HOW ENGLAND^ FRANCE AND ITALY ARE 
CONTROLLING AND SAVING FOOD 

A PERTINENT question, whose answer has been 
as yet no more than indicated in this book, is that 
concerning the food conservation by the AUies. 
Americans who are asked to Hmit their consumption 
of bread, meat and sugar for the sake of supplying 
our Allies with food will want to know what the 
Allies themselves are doing in the way of food 
economy. That each of them has a governmental 
food administration has already been said. Each 
of them began its food control under some already 
existing government department. But each of them 
has come to the realization of the necessity of set- 
ting up what is essentially an independent govern- 
mental organization for food control. 

It may be said at once that all these food admin- 
istrations of the Allies are vigorous ones, and their 
actions drastic. They use some methods that will 
not be used here. They regulate the food use in 
public eating-places such as hotels, restaurants, clubs, 
etc., by direct and specific decree of the food con- 

38 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 39 

troller. And, in lesser degree, they regulate the 
food use of the people in their homes also by 
government decree. As regards certain foods they 
practically put the peoples of their countries on 
rations. However, they all place their greatest re- 
liance, as we shall do here, on the voluntary co- 
operation of the households to effect the needed 
care in the food use of the people at home. 

ITALY 

England and France have gone farther in some 
respects than Italy in food regulation, but numerous 
recent decrees of the Italian government show a 
plain tendency to bring its control of food up to the 
standard of its Allies. As a matter of fact, the 
government is seriously considering at the time 
of this writing (September) the adoption of a de- 
finitive rationing scheme to cover all the more 
important food staples such as bread, meat, fats, 
sugar, etc. Even now certain Italian cities are on 
ration as regards flour and bread. The adoption 
of such a system will carry Italy's control beyond 
anything yet adopted by England or France. 

As early as the summer of 191 5 Italy took active 
measures to establish a general reorganization of 
food importing and distribution under government 
control, and to authorize governmental requisition- 
ing of produce and food businesses, the fixing of 
maximum sale prices and a provisional system of 



40 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

rationing applicable to local centres. Since then 
there has been a constantly increasing governmental 
control both of food handling and food consump- 
tion, first administered by the department for agri- 
culture, but in January of this year put under the 
special supervision of a Commissary General of 
Supplies, an office filled since its creation by Onere- 
vole Giuseppe Canepa, Under Secretary for Agri- 
culture. 

The care of grain and its milling has been from 
the beginning a matter of especial solicitude, as it 
has in all of the countries undertaking governmental 
food control. The reason is fully indicated by the 
single word, bread. Minimum prices to stimulate 
production, maximum prices to protect the con- 
sumer, and requisitioning of native and imported 
cereals to regulate distribution have all been pro- 
vided for. " Grain Assemblies " have been insti- 
tuted in the various provinces, each of which attends 
to the supply and distribution of cereals and flour 
within the limits of its province. 

The wheat must now be milled at 90 per cent 
(which means that only 10 per cent of the whole 
wheat kernel does not go into the flour). The mill- 
ing percentage was first (March, 19 16) put at 80 
per cent, then later 85 per cent, and on May 29 of 
this year at 90 per cent. It is the highest per cent 
used by any of the Allies, which means that Italy's 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 4I 

war bread comes nearer than either England's or 
France's to being whole wheat flour. 

Bread must be baked in the form of a smooth 
loaf of a fixed minimum weight. The weight was 
first put at 700 grams (24% ounces) and is now 
250 grams (8% ounces). Bread may not be put 
on sale or given for food until the day after it is 
baked, and it may not be treated by special processes 
to keep it fresh. The time for baking is limited 
to between 10 a. m. and 9 p. m. and its sale and 
distribution must cease on week days at i p. m. 
and on Sunday at mid-day. No sweet pastries may 
be made. The manufacture of gluten cakes for the 
sick is permitted, but the gluten must be derived 
from the regular war flour, i.e., flour from 90 
per cent milling. 

Especially drastic regulations govern the use of 
sugar. Its manufacture, distribution and sale are 
closely controlled, and partly actually taken over by 
the State. The government is trying to limit the 
consumption to 15,000 tons a month for the entire 
population, army included, which means an allow- 
ance of about 500 grams (iHo lbs.) a month, or 
thirteen pounds a year for each person. We use 
eighty pounds a year per person ! Sugar cards are 
in use in the principal cities. The manufacture and 
sale of candies and sweets of any kind except choco- 
late in small tablets and certain medicated pastilles 



42 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

and lozenges are prohibited, and the use of sugar 
in any manufactured products is greatly restricted. 
Saccharine is permitted to be sold and used as a 
substitute for sugar, and the government manufac- 
tures a mixture of saccharine and sugar called 
"state sugar." 

Various special regulations govern the slaughter- 
ing of animals and the use of meat. There is a 
regulating committee in each province which de- 
termines every now and then the limit to be set on 
meat consumption, by fixing figures for the total 
number and weight of sheep and cattle which may 
be slaughtered for the immediate needs of the civil 
population and the canning of preserved meat. It 
has recently been decided that the number of cattle 
to be slaughtered monthly should be determined on 
the basis of a national meat rationing system. 
Since May, 191 5, it has been unlawful to slaughter 
calves of less weight than 200 kilograms (440 lbs.) 
on the hoof, or swine of less than 75 kilos (165 lbs.) 
or lambs of less than 10 kilos (22 lbs.). The sale 
of fresh meat for the use of public eating-places 
is prohibited for two consecutive days per week. 
In the army some of the meat ration for the ter- 
ritorial troops has been replaced by minestroni, a 
soup made of rice, vegetables, etc. For the troops 
on active service salt fish has been substituted for 
part of the meat ration. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 43 

The use of eggs in the manufacture of sweet 
stuffs has been restricted, and preference in the dis- 
tribution of eggs to invaHds, children and nursing 
mothers has been ordered. Since the end of 191 6 
the exportation of cheese has been prohibited for 
the sake both of lessening its production and for 
restricting certain forms of hard cheese to the use 
of the army. 

The control of public eating-places is rigorous. 
The serving of butter, fresh or salted, of cream 
and whipped cream, and of dishes garnished with 
eggs is prohibited. Sweet dishes also are prohibited 
except on Thursdays and Fridays, and then may 
be served only at dinner. A fixed price lunch may 
not comprise more than two dishes, and a dinner 
more than three, of which in each case only one 
may be a meat dish. Similarly, a person ordering 
a la carte may not have more than three dishes of 
which but one may be meat. All public eating-places 
must hand to the police every day a copy of their 
bill of fare, and the whole bill may not list more 
than ten dishes, of which no more than four may 
be meat. Public eating places must close not later 
than eleven o'clock and may not open before dawn. 
However, the railway station restaurants may open 
one hour before the departure of the first train and 
remain open one hour after the departure of the 
last train, provided that the only entrance to the res- 



44 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

taurant is from inside the station, thus limiting 
the patrons to passengers and station employes. 

The attempt to stimulate production by the estab- 
lishment of minimum prices to the producers has 
been referred to. These prices have had to be 
increased from time to time. For example, by 
decree of January, 191 7, the minimum prices of 
cereals to be observed in all requisitioning of the 
19 1 7 crop by the government for the army of civil 
population, and in all civil contracts, were as fol- 
lows: Wheat, soft or semi-hard, 45 lire per net 
quintal; wheat, hard, 50 lire; corn, 33 lire; oats, 
33 lire; barley, 40 lire; rye, 40 lire; and rice, 37 
lire. In July, 191 7, the prices for the 19 18 crop 
were established as follows : Wheat, soft or semi- 
hard, 52 lire per net quintal (220% lbs.) (equiva- 
lent to about $1.87 a bushel) ; wheat, hard, 60 lire 
(about $2.18 a bushel) ; corn, 38 lire, (about $1.31 
a bushel) ; oats, 38 lire (about 74 cents ^ a bushel) ; 
barley, 43 lire (about $1.25 a bushel) ; rye, 43 lire 
(about $1.48 a bushel). These prices are increased 

^This difference in dollar price per bushel of oats from 
that of corn which has the same price in lire per quintal as 
that of oats is explained by the fact that while the quintal is 
a weight measure, being equivalent to 220.46 lbs., the weight of 
a bushel varies with the different grains. A quintal of oats 
makes about 6% bushels, while a quintal of corn makes but 
3% bushels. In these computations a dollar is taken as 7.45 
lire, the exchange rate at the time of this computation (August, 
1917). 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 45 

by from 20 to 30 centesimi a month for deliveries 
made after August i, 19 18. Minimum prices have 
also been fixed for grain-straw and horse beans. 

Where the farmer produces crops either in excess 
of normal production or under unusually difficult 
conditions the prices fixed by the government may 
be ten per cent in excess of the regular official rate. 
The government may determine the amount of in- 
creased acreage which any farmer or association 
should cultivate. It may also require the land- 
owner to allow an increased area to tenants. 
Finally, a government decree of June, 191 7, strongly 
encourages users of agricultural machinery. So- 
cieties, companies and agricultural associations are 
granted concessions up to 30 per cent of the amount 
expended for the purchase of tractors and me- 
chanical ploughs, and in the case of machines 
worked in groups of five or more, 40 per cent of 
the cost is allowed as subsidy. This measure has 
given great satisfaction to the Italian farmers and 
is having an important influence in the increase of 
cereal production. 

FRANCE 

The chief responsibility for carrying out the meas- 
ures adopted by France for stimulating its food 
production and controlling its food consumption 
lay, from September, 19 14, to January, 191 7, with 



46 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Posts and 
Telegraphs; then from January, 19 17, to March 
20, 191 7, with the Ministry of Public Works, of 
Transports and Provisioning, and has been since 
March 20 with a specially created Ministry of Pro- 
visioning and Maritime Transports. M. Violette 
has been the Minister in charge since the creation 
of this special Ministry, until the time of this 
writing (September) when, in the formation of the 
new cabinet under M. Painleve, he has been suc- 
ceeded by M. Maurice Long. 

The swift falling off in the food production in 
France, beginning with the crops of 19 15 and pro- 
gressing ever more seriously in 1916 and 1917 — 
the wheat acreage of 1917 is but two-thirds that 
of the pre-war acreage — has claimed a constant 
attention and led to a long and important series 
of actions taken to check it. Measures for the 
stimulation of production figure conspicuously in 
the long list of regulations. And yet despite them 
France suffers more than either of her Allies from 
the falling off of native production. The explana- 
tion is ready to hand : She has contributed more 
of her man-power to the fatal trench lines, and sent 
this man-power sooner; also, an appreciable frac- 
tion of her cultivated lands are in the hands of the 
invaders. 

The many measures undertaken to stimulate pro- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 47 

duction refer to labour, to methods of cultivation, 
including use of machinery, and finally to the utiliza- 
tion of waste lands. Numerous special agricultural 
commissions, from national to cantonal and com- 
munal ones, have been formed ; the government has 
given financial assistance for the purchase of trac- 
tors and other needed farm machines ; has arranged 
for special furloughs at seeding and harvesting 
times of agricultural labourers in the army, and 
even the entire removal from the army of the agri- 
cultural workers among the earlier classes (older 
men) ; and has established fixed minimum prices 
to be paid the producers of cereals and other crops 
for government requisition. 

These cereal prices have been changed, always 
increasing, several times. The last fixation of these 
prices was in July of this year and is as follows: 
Wheat, 50 francs per lOO kilograms (about $2.64 
a bushel) ; barley, 42 frcs. per 100 kilos ($1.76 a 
bu.) ; corn, 42 frcs. per 100 kilos ($2.06 a bushel) ; 
rye, 42 frcs. per 100 kilos ($2.06 a bu.) ; oats, 42 
frcs. per loo kilos ($1.14 a bushel). This is a 
very large increase over the prices existing before 
this time, which were 36 francs per 100 kilos for 
wheat, 34 francs for oats and barley and 33 for 
rye; there was no minimum price for corn. These 
earlier prices were for the 191 7 crop and dated no 
farther back than April of this year. The meaning 



48 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of this great jump is plain; it is that the previous 
prices were not sufficient to induce the farmers to 
devote their attention to the cereals and thus increase 
the native crop of bread and feed grains. 

The measures undertaken to control the com- 
mercial operations in foodstuffs begin, seriously, 
with a law passed in October, 19 15, giving the 
government the right to requisition wheat and flour 
for the civil population at a fixed price — the right 
of requisition for the army is of long standing — 
and to buy these commodities abroad, and distribute 
the government supplies thus obtained according 
to the needs of the population. In April, 19 16, a 
similar law was passed for the other cereals, rye, 
oats, barley, and bran. A series of ministerial de- 
crees based on these laws set out the methods and 
details to be followed in carrying out this radical 
substitution of a governmental operation for the 
ordinary commercial methods of supplying the peo- 
ple of France with their bread-stuffs. 

Laws and decrees regulating milling and baking 
followed rapidly, and a long series of orders estab- 
lishing and enforcing maximum prices of various 
commodities came into being and is still being added 
to. The most inclusive maximum price law is that 
of April 20, 1 91 6, which authorizes the fixing of 
maximum prices during the war and for a period 
of three months after the cessation of hostilities, 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 49 

for the following commodities : coffee, oil and gaso- 
line, potatoes, milk, margarine, alimentary fats, 
salad oils, dry vegetables, commercial fertilizers, 
sulphate of copper and sulphur, as well as bread 
and meat. Also this law authorizes generals of the 
army and commanders in the region of the North 
to fix the maximum prices on all food and liquor 
destined to military consumption in the districts 
under their command, even if these foodstuffs are 
not included in the list of commodities above. They 
may also establish a maximum price on all foods 
and liquors destined for the civil population, after 
having consulted with the prefects. 

All of the maximum price laws and decrees which 
are intended to suppress illicit speculation and to 
prevent inflated profits have been subject to much 
discussion. Some of them have even been re- 
voked; and some of the maximum prices have 
been abolished, as, for example, those for potatoes, 
milk, butter and cheese of all kinds. The outcome 
of the whole French debate is an agreement with 
the conclusion reached in other countries, namely, 
that maximum price measures can be enforced with 
success only in the case of commodities the supply 
of which is under the control of the government. 
Where the supply is not thus controlled, maximum 
price measures afford little relief. If not considered 
high enough by the producers, they tend to force 



50 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the commodities covered by them out of the open 
market. 

The regulations that France has established for 
the control of the immediate consumption of food- 
stuffs fall into various categories as regards the 
nature of the control exercised. But it v^ill be more 
convenient and informing to describe the more im- 
portant of these regulations according to the com- 
modities and the individuals affected. 

Wheat is now milled at 85 per cent. It has been 
successively changed from 74 per cent to y'j per cent 
to 80 per cent and finally, May, 19 17, to 85 per cent. 
Flour made from other cereals must be mixed with 
this wheat flour to the amount of 30 per cent. The 
flour must be furnished by millers only to certain 
designated bakers in each Department and each 
baker may sell his bread only to certain households 
and individuals placed upon his lists. All bread 
must be made of the war flour, and no pastry or 
fancy cakes may be made. The bread is distributed 
on a bread card system, which permits each child 
of from one to six years to have 300 grams (10% 
oz.) of bread a day; and each person over six 
years, 500 grams (iMo lbs.) of bread a day. Cer- 
tain supplementary amounts may be furnished under 
certain conditions, as well as small supplementary 
amounts of flour for cooking. Careful arrange- 
ments are made to see that hotels, restaurants, etc., 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 5 I 

are given only as much bread as their patronage 
warrants. This bread must be sold by the baker 
for 45 centimes (just changed to 50 centimes) a 
loaf of one kilogram (2.2 lbs.) weight, which is less 
than he can make it for. The difference is paid 
to the bakers by the government. 

Various decrees regulate the consumption of meat. 
A decree of October 14, 191 5, prohibited the killing 
of heifers of less than two and a half years of 
age; of lambs weighing less than twenty-five kilo- 
grams (55 lbs.); and of pigs weighing less than 
sixty kilograms (132 lbs.) In April of this year 
the sale of fresh, frozen, salted or canned meats 
on Thursday and Friday of each week was pro- 
hibited as from May 15 to October 15. It was also 
prohibited to sell meat or dishes containing meat 
on these same days in public eating-places. All 
butcher and sausage shops, and meat booths in 
markets, must be closed on the days that the sale 
of meat is prohibited. Special exceptions are made 
for the sale of meat for the sick and to hospitals. 
Slaughter houses must be closed each week from 
eleven o'clock Tuesday night until six o'clock Fri- 
day morning, from May 15 to October 15. A 
later decree provides that the serving of meat is 
prohibited at all meals served after six o'clock 
except Sundays. Also, beginning April 25, all 
butcher shops and meat booths in markets must 



52 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

close every day at one o'clock. This order revoked 
the decree of ten days previous creating two meat- 
less days a week. On May 14, a new decree re- 
voked most of the decree of April 24 and re-estab- 
lished most of the decree of April 14. The results 
obtained from prohibiting the consumption of meat 
after six p. m. every day except Sundays in public 
eating places, and ordering all butcher shops to 
close at one o'clock were not satisfactory. In con- 
sequence, new measures of regulation were set out. 
These provide that on two consecutive days each 
week all slaughtering, sale and consumption of meat 
in public establishments, horse meat alone excepted, 
shall be prohibited. 

The sugar production of France has fallen off 
from an acreage of two hundred and fifty thousand 
hectares in 19 13 to seventy-two thousand hectares 
in 191 7. To restrict the consumption of sugar, 
sugar cards are used allowing the purchase of but 
seven hundred and fifty grams of sugar a month 
per person. This means an allowance of about one 
ounce a day or eighteen pounds per year for each 
person. Let us recall again that in America we 
use about eighty pounds per person a year. But 
the possession of a sugar card does not necessarily 
mean that one can buy sugar. To buy it one must 
find it to sell. A dealer who has sugar will not 
sell it to any one who comes in. He saves it for 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 53 

his regular customers. During the fruit months of 
June, July and August an additional allowance per 
person of five hundred grams a month was made 
for preserving fruit and making jams and mar- 
malade. A scale of maximum prices for the dif- 
ferent grades of sugar has been in effect since July. 
By a law passed in April, the employment of sac- 
charine in the preparation of certain sweet products 
has been permitted. Since July there has also been 
a scale of maximum prices for saccharine, the price 
varying with the amount purchased. 

In order to control the use of animal feed, a 
decree of July, 1917, specifies the amount of feed 
which can be given to various domestic animals, 
according to their age and size. In other words, 
all domestic animals in France are put on rations. 

By order of January 25, 19 17, all public eating 
places are subject to regulation, beginning February 
15, which limits each person to two dishes, of which 
only one can be meat, at each meal. Provision is 
made for additional dishes of soup or hors d'oeuvres 
and cheese or dessert. Each public eating place is 
required to send daily to the police a copy of the 
bill of fare. A later circular authorizes the substi- 
tution of snails or oysters in place of hors d'oeuvres, 
prescribed in the earlier order, and allows the meal 
to include both cheese and a dessert instead of 
only one of these. Bread must not be furnished 



54 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

free in the restaurants, but must be sold at five 
centimes a slice. 

ENGLAND 

After a visit to London in May of this year M. 
Violette, the French Minister of provisioning, told 
the Paris correspondent of the London Times that 
one of the most interesting differences he had noted 
betv^een the attempts at food control in France and 
England was that the restrictions in England are 
largely of a voluntary character. When he was in 
London, he said, he found that none of the restric- 
tions interfered with his ordinary habits. At home 
it was different. France had already put into force 
a large number of governmental measures which 
directly controlled the food purchasing and consum- 
ing habits of the individual. 

It is true that France began the issuing of gov- 
ernmental decrees affecting food immediately after 
the outbreak of the war, but earlier ones had chiefly 
to do with the assembly of information concerning 
the food resources of the country, and it was not 
until the latter part of 191 5 that the long series of 
more important and drastic regulations now in force 
began to be formulated. England began later with 
her regulations, but in the last few months she 
has established so many and such drastic ones touch- 
ing the specific control of food use that it is doubtful 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 55 

if M. Violette were to visit London again now 
that he would find England very different from 
France in respect to regulation of the individual 
food habits. 

The food problem of England did not become 
acute until some time after the war began. Certain 
measures of governmental food control were early 
undertaken, as the two acts of August lo and 28 
respectively directed against " unreasonable with- 
holding'' by dealers of any foodstuffs, giving the 
Board of Trade authority to seize, on payment of a 
reasonable price, any such hoarded supplies. But 
no actions were taken under these laws. The pro- 
hibition of importation of sugar from any European 
port was declared by proclamation of September 14, 
19 14. In the same month followed the establish- 
ment of a Royal Sugar Commission, and in Oc- 
tober sugar imports from any foreign country were 
prohibited without special license from this Com- 
mission. These were actions primarily designed 
to check trading with the enemy, and real food 
conservation measures were not actively under- 
taken for nearly two years. Beginning with 
October, 1916, however, laws and decrees were 
rapidly passed and issued until now England 
has a series of food regulations hardly less long 
and comprehensive than that of France. In addi- 
tion, her appeals to the voluntary co-operation of- 



56 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

her people have been the most detailed and made 
with the most elaborate machinery of propaganda 
of any of the Allies. Her first activities v^ere in 
charge of the Board of Trade, but in January of 
the year (1917) a special Ministry of food was 
established with Lord Devonport at its head as 
Food Controller. In July Lord Rhondda succeeded 
Lord Devonport in this office. The Food Con- 
troller has great powers. In respect to requisition- 
ing and controlling prices his powers are as large 
as those of the Admiralty, Army Council or Min- 
ister of Munitions. He may make absolute orders 
controlling the production, manufacture, storage, 
transport, distribution, purchase or sale, use and 
consumption of any article of food. He is not 
a food controller; he is literally a food dicta- 
tor. 

Among the various phases of food legislation that 
of the stimulation of production by the establish- 
ment of guaranteed minimum prices to the pro- 
ducers of grain, and minimum wages to agricultural 
labourers, and by direct governmental aid to the 
farmers for acquiring grazing lands to plough up 
and machinery for farm work has been one given 
special attention by the English government and 
with notable success. In April, 191 7, the most 
elaborate and far-reaching scheme of stimulation 
of production yet adopted by any government was 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 57 

undertaken by the passage of the '^ Corn Production 
Bill." It provides for the guarantee to grain farm- 
ers of a sliding scale of minimum prices for wheat 
extending over six years, as follows: harvest of 
19 1 7, 60 shillings per quarter ($1.7834 a bushel) ; 
1918 and 1919, 55 shillings per quarter ($1.63% 
a bushel) ; 1920, 1921 and 1922, 45 shillings per 
quarter ($1.33% a bushel). Specified minimum 
prices for oats were also declared. Also a minimum 
wage of 25 shillings a week was guaranteed to agri- 
cultural labourers through this period. 

England has always had an undue proportion of 
grazing land to cultivated land. While Germany 
has nearly 50 per cent of her total area under actual 
cultivation and France has 45 per cent, England 
has a little less than 25 per cent. But England's 
active measures, especially during the last few 
months, have notably increased her grain and vege- 
table producing acreage. Mr. Lloyd George de- 
clared in a speech to the House of Commons on 
August 16 of this year that whereas in December, 
19 16, the cultivated area was between two and three 
hundred thousand acres less than in December, 
191 5, it is now one million acres larger than last 
year. This means an addition of between three and 
four million tons of grain and potatoes to England's 
food supply. It is confidently expected that the 
increase in area cultivated for the 19 18 crops will 



58 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

be no less than two million acres, and more prob- 
ably will reach nearly three million. 

This is being accomplished by the minimum prices 
order, by the enforced allotment, by counties, of 
grazing and waste lands to be broken up and cul- 
tivated, and by the re-allotment of badly farmed 
land, and the restriction of acreage for " luxury '' 
crops and hops and the devotion of the land gained 
to staples; by extending credit to farmers, and by 
the practical compulsion of farmers to cultivate the 
land made available to them. Henry Gatley, a 
farmer of Cornwall, was summoned on July 31 for 
failure to cultivate five acres of potatoes and fined 
twenty pounds! 

It is also being accomplished by the furloughing 
and return of agricultural labourers from the army, 
— in addition more than 100,000 women are now 
working at farm labour in regions where heretofore 
no women have been so employed; on the other 
hand, England, unlike Germany, is using but few 
prisoners of war in the fields, — by the aid of gov- 
ernmental establishment of well-equipped stations 
for drying vegetables and pulping fruit, and by the 
provision of seed wheat, fertilizers, horse feed and 
farm machinery to the farmers. Lloyd George an- 
nounced in his speech of August 16 that the gov- 
ernment had already acquired for loan to the farm- 
ers, 1000 tractors, by October would have 2500, 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 59 

and by the spring of 191 8, 8000. These are, of 
course, in addition to any increase in privately 
owned ones. The government has also taken active 
measures to rehabilitate the fisheries industry, badly 
demoralized by the impressment of trawlers and 
fishermen in the service of the Navy. By March, 
19 18, every English fisherman of military age will 
have been taken for naval service. Various laws 
useful in peace times for fish protection are tem- 
porarily revoked. 

England's governmental control of the foreign 
purchase and importation, the home purchase, sale 
and distribution of foodstuffs is now most com- 
prehensive. Maximum prices and sales regulation 
have been fixed for the sale of wheat and the other 
food and feed grains and their products, beans, 
peas and pulse, potatoes, milk, cheese, butter, lard, 
margarine, livestock and meats, jams and jellies, 
sugar, chocolate and other sweets. 

All wheat is controlled by the Royal Wheat Com- 
mission, and all mills have been taken over by the 
government. Wheat is milled at 81 per cent and 
to the flour thus obtained flour made of other cereals 
is now added, in amount of from 30 to 50 per cent. 
The making of bread by bakers is rigidly controlled, 
and arrangements have just (September) been per- 
fected for the sale of all bread, for cash over the 
counter, at the fixed price of gd. (18 cents) a loaf 



6o THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of four pounds — the price had reached I2d. in 
August. To do this the government will have to 
make up to the bakers their loss, for with the pre- 
vaiUng price of flour and wages of labour, the four- 
pound loaf cannot be made for ninepence. It is 
estimated that the difference will cost the govern- 
ment under present wheat prices, nearly forty thou- 
sand pounds a year. 

Sugar is under close control. An elaborate sys- 
tem of distribution based on personal sugar cards 
will go into effect this month (September). Each 
household may buy sugar only on presentation of 
a card; caterers will have their supplies regulated 
according to the number of meals served, and in- 
stitutions according to the number of inmates. 
Manufacturers will be supplied under strict regu- 
lation and all sellers, wholesale and retail, will be 
able to obtain and sell supplies only under an elabo- 
rate system of registration and vouchers. 

As early as the end of 191 6 the government 
began a special control of public eating places. On 
December 5 the famous limitation of courses or 
so-called " Runciman Order '' was made. This was 
before the establishment of the special Ministry 
of Food and was made by the Board of Trade, 
of which Mr. Runciman was head. This regula- 
tion limited all luncheons in public eating rooms 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 6 1 

(hotels, restaurants, clubs, etc.) to two courses and 
dinners to three. For purpose of the order soups, 
hors d'oeuvres not made of fish and meats, poultry 
or game counted as one course, as also cheese ; soup 
if containing no meat in solid form counted as but 
half a course, and desserts consisting exclusively 
of fresh or dried fruit counted as a half course 
only. With any course of meat vegetables could 
be served. Thus for luncheon one might have 
vegetable hors d'oeuvres, a meat and vegetable course 
and a pudding or tart w^ith cheese; or a clear soup, 
meat and vegetable course and fruit dessert. For 
dinner a second meat course could be added. This 
order lasted just four months and was then revoked 
as a confessed failure. What it did was actually 
to increase the amount of staples as regard meat 
and bread consumed, lessening the use of the less 
important and more luxurious foods — which is 
exactly what England does not want to do. 
Wealthy persons who would normally eat several 
''frippery " courses at luncheon or dinner in none 
of which, perhaps, solid meat had a place, ordered 
for these two or three courses the staples and full 
meat dishes. As a matter of fact, it is estimated 
on the basis of actual figures furnished by the Asso- 
ciation of Hotels and Restaurants of London that 
the limited courses order increased the consumption 



62 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of staple meats by 25 per cent, and also increased, 
perhaps in no less degree, the consumption of other 
staples, as bread, sugar, butter and potatoes. 

On April 4, therefore, a new Public Meals Order 
(amended and amplified on May 4) was issued 
doing away with the limitation on the number of 
courses, but specifying specific maximum amounts 
of meat, sugar, bread and flour which may be used 
in public eating places, as follows: for one person, 
meat, breakfast, two ounces, luncheon, five ounces, 
dinner, five, tea none: sugar, two-sevenths of an 
ounce for each of the four meals; flour (used in 
cooking) one ounce each for lunch and dinner, none 
for breakfast or tea. Two ounces of poultry and 
game are to be reckoned as one ounce of meat. 
The weight of the meat is to be that of the uncooked 
meat, including bone, as it is delivered by the 
butcher. Four ounces of bread are to be reckoned 
as three ounces of flour. No potatoes or any food 
of which potatoes form part shall be served or 
eaten on any day except Friday. (This potato re- 
striction was removed on July 3.) The order does 
not apply to boarding houses of ten bed-rooms or 
less, nor to any public eating place where no meal 
is served the total charge for which, excluding 
beverages, exceeds one shilling and threepence. 
No allowance of food is made for any meal before 
5 A. M. or after 9 :30 p. m. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 63 

The order therefore cuts out theatre suppers and 
encourages the vending of cheap meals. As a mat- 
ter of fact, most of the restaurant companies, like 
Lyons, A. B. C, and similar ones, serving good 
cheap meals, immediately put on the one shilling 
threepence limit. The Association of Hotels and 
Restaurants estimates that the order will result in 
a saving of meat over the amount consumed before 
the limited courses order went into effect of forty- 
nine per cent and over the amount consumed during 
the period the limited courses order was in effect 
of sixty-one per cent. The saving of bread is esti- 
mated to be fifty-three per cent and sugar sixty- 
three per cent. Although it is too soon at this 
writing to. make a statement as to the success of 
this last order we can, however, give the testimony 
of the managing director of the largest and best 
known hotel in London. He states that whereas 
before the order went into effect he made a weekly 
purchase of 13,500 pounds of meat from the Smith- 
field Market, he now purchases a little less than 
half of that amount although the number of guests 
in his restaurants has not been decreased. The 
average consumption of meat in different classes of 
hotels and restaurants in December last amounted 
to 11.79 ounces per head for luncheon and for din- 
ner. The consumption ranged from 10.5 up to 
13.72 ounces and included all classes of restaurants. 



64 ' THE FOOD PROBLEM 

Thus, it is obvious that the five-ounce limitation 
means a full and immediate saving of meat used 
in public eating places of at least fifty per cent. 
The average consumption of bread was 4/4 ounces 
a meal, which has been reduced by the order to 2 
ounces to the meal. Much of the bread formerly 
served was wasted. In the great hotel referred to 
there was about five sacks daily of 130 lbs. each of 
waste bread; there is now less than half a sack. 

In order to conserve the food grains, orders have 
been issued at various times (January 11, April 20, 
May 2, August 14 and 15, 19 17), restricting the 
use of these grains for seed and human or animal 
food. These orders of course incidentally affect 
the making of malt and distilled liquors. But this 
matter of reducing the consumption of alcoholic 
liquors is directly handled by several special orders, 
one of March 29 of this year being the most com- 
prehensive. This order cut down the annual out- 
put of beer in the United Kingdom from the twenty- 
six million barrels allowed for the year ending 
March 31, 191 6, to ten million barrels. The 
twenty-six millions of 19 15-16 were in their turn 
about ten million less than the pre-war annual aver- 
age barrelage, so that the allowance of ten million 
barrels is but 2"]'^/^ per cent of the pre-war annual 
average. Another order prohibited any malting of 
grain after February of this year. It is estimated 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 65 

that the malt on hand would enable the brewers 
to make their permitted amounts of beer up to 
November of this year. 

The March order also provided for a marked 
reduction in the deliveries of wine and spirits. 
Permission to receive such liquors is reserved ex- 
clusively to persons to whom wine or spirits were 
delivered in 191 6, and the total amount per- 
mitted to be thus delivered may not be more than 
50 per cent of the 191 6 deliveries. Several orders 
variously limit the time when alcoholic liquors may 
be sold at retail; all treating is forbidden and a 
general attempt is made to reduce the opportunity 
and invitation to drink. 

An interesting recent feature of the English con- 
trol of food distribution is the creation by decree 
of August 17 of local food control committees over 
England, Wales and Scotland. Each committee 
will be composed of not more than twelve members 
of whom at least one must be a woman and one a 
representative of labour. Their expenses will be 
borne by the government. The first duty of these 
committees will be to administer the distribution of 
sugar and further the campaign of voluntary food 
economy. Later they will be empowered to deal 
with other foodstuffs, including meat and bread. 
They will be given certain responsibilities in regard 
to the enforcement of the food prices, determined 



66 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

by the Food Controller, and will be asked to advise 
on the necessary local modifications of them. Up 
to the end of August more than fifteen hundred of 
these committees had been formed. 

Finally, we must devote a few words to the great 
English campaign for voluntary food control. This 
campaign has been carried into every city and town 
and hamlet in the islands, and it has had real re- 
sults. The Food Controller, through a special 
" director-general of food economy " has asked the 
people to restrict themselves in their homes to the 
same allowance of bread, meat and sugar permitted 
to diners in public eating places. This means four 
pounds of flour, two and a half of meat and one- 
half pound of sugar a week for each person in the 
household. All houses agreeing to do this receive 
a small placard bearing in conspicuous letters of 
black and red these words : 

IN HONOUR BOUND 

WE ADOPT 

THE NATIONAL SCALE 

OF VOLUNTARY RATIONS 

This placard is put face outward into a front win- 
dow of the house. In the short street in which I 
lived in London last spring three out of four houses 
showed the placard. In a certain village of 250 
houses all but 25 displayed the card. 

Altogether as a result of this appeal and an in- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 67 

dependent " Eat Less Bread " campaign the Food 
Controller is able to declare that fifteen per cent 
less bread was eaten in the United Kingdom in 
June of this year than in February. In some of 
the larger cities the consumption of bread was re- 
duced by as much as 25 per cent to 30 per cent. 
Portsmouth reduced its weekly per capita consump- 
tion to 3 lbs. I oz. and Keighley, the '* model town/' 
to 2 lb. .07 oz. " It is perfectly safe to say/' writes 
Director General Kennedy Jones, '' that an enor- 
mous reduction has been effected through the vol- 
untary efforts of the people in the United Kingdom 
in the consumption of practically all food-stuffs." 

CONCLUSION 

This fleeting examination of what the Western 
Allies are doing to stimulate food production, 
eliminate wasteful commercial practices and " profit- 
eering," and control consumption, gives only a par- 
tial survey of the actual work being done. And 
no attempt has been made to discuss with any critical 
consideration the value of the methods employed 
and to extract the lessons to be learned by us from 
the experiences of our friends overseas. And yet 
in addition to the answering of the repeated ques- 
tions of many: Are our Allies conserving food, 
and if so, how and to what extent are they doing 
it? any account of the attempts of England, France 



68 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

and Italy at food control should be rich in sugges- 
tions to us of America as to what to do and what 
not to do in our own endeavours, only fairly be- 
gun as yet, to solve our food problem. 

Take, for example, the question of the effect 
and the advantage of establishing maximum prices. 
Germany, Italy, France and England have all leaped 
at this presumably simple solution of the problem of 
profiteering and distress of the consumer. But 
it is now obvious that this is no simple solution; 
it is doubtful indeed, if under any but the circum- 
stances of an absolute governmental control of the 
bulk of the commodity priced it is any solution at 
all. For its application immediately creates new 
problems ; most conspicuously, the problem of keep- 
ing the commodity in the market. Fix a price for 
food at a price lower than the producer believes he 
should receive and the commodity vanishes from 
sight and access. 

Also, we must recognize that with all the best 
will and best work in the world, all endeavour to 
keep prices down in war time is met by an irresistible 
force which tends to push them up. The prices of 
foodstuffs in the warring countries have steadily 
mounted until now, taking all the commodities to- 
gether and striking a rough average, food can 
fairly be said to cost in England, France and Italy 
fully twice, and in Germany three times, what it 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 69 

did at the time of the outbreak of the war. 
Bread in France must be excepted, but its con- 
tinual low price is artificial; the government 
pays to keep it down, which means that the 
French people of now and to come are to pay for 
it by indirection. In England the bread price in 
1914 was five and a half pence the four-pound loaf; 
this year it is twelvepence. But the government 
has now fixed it at ninepence and will pay the dif- 
ference. War necessarily means high prices, but 
food control ought to mean that these prices are 
not unnecessarily high. 

Again, limitation of courses seems an easy means 
to reduce consumption in public eating places. It 
is, of foodstuffs, of which we are not interested in 
restricting the use. But England found it actually 
to increase the consumption of those very all- 
important necessities which she wishes to con- 
serve. 

And so one might — and ought — to work over 
the whole mass of the Allies' experiments and ex- 
periences now available to us. We of the Food 
Administration are trying to do that. But we of 
this little book cannot undertake it. The principal 
fact that we may draw from the contents of this 
chapter is that our Allies who are asking us for im- 
peratively needed help with their food supply, — 
which means, if we shall meet their call, some con- 



70 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

trol and conservation of our own supply — are not 
asking this without making on their own part a 
most earnest and adventurous attempt to help them- 
selves. 



CHAPTER IV 

FOOD CONTROL IN GERMANY, AND ITS LESSONS 

When a people is placed under limitation in the 
supply of foodstuffs, the correct basis for the solu- 
tion of the difficulty lies in an analysis of the dietary 
habits of the people and of the processes of produc- 
tion and distribution related thereto. When one 
follows a particular commodity one learns, after 
having determined the amount produced, that the 
outgo follows four directions : — in food ; in feed 
for domesticated animals ; in industry ; and in waste. 
In the conservation of foodstuffs in a period of 
stress, efforts for amelioration are naturally divided 
under the headings of production, distribution, and 
consumption. It is not possible within a brief space 
to describe in detail the methods practised by the 
German authorities in dealing with the conserva- 
tion of the food supply under blockade by the Allies. 
It is, however, possible to present a sketch in broad 
outlines, in order that the points of difference from 
the control attempted by England, France and 
Italy, and the control now in course of being be- 
gun in our own country, may be brought out. 

71 



^2 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

Germany was an importer of foodstuffs. She 
was an importer of bread grains, feeding-stuffs that 
were indirectly the basis for domestic food produc- 
tion, and colonial wares, such as coffee. She was 
an exporter, in a large sense, of sugar only. Placed 
under blockade, the needed imports were curtailed 
and the exportation of sugar abolished, though not 
until the second year of the war. Viewed as a unit, 
Germany was accustomed to import from 15 to 20 
per cent of her foodstuffs. Austria-Hungary, as a 
unit, was an exporter of grains, sugar, and to a cer- 
tain extent of animal products. In the case of Aus- 
tria-Hungary the exports more than balanced the 
imports in nutritional values, and with the mainte- 
nance of normal efficiency the Central Empires 
should have been self-sustaining. They did not, 
however, operate in unity. Each passed laws 
against the other and in particular Austria-Hungary 
was very loath to allow foodstuffs to pass into 
Germany. 

Shut off from importation of bread grains, in 
consideration of the area of Germany and the high 
productivity per acre under intensive methods of 
agriculture, it would seem that it might have been 
possible for Germany to have stimulated the pro- 
duction of grain to the point of normal consump- 
tion. The average yield in a series of years before 
the war was 26,000,000 tons ; the average consump- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 73 

tion, 32,000,000 tons; the deficit, therefore, 6,000,- 
000 tons. The agricultural authorities of Germany 
confidently expected to produce the sum represented 
as deficit through increased agricultural stimulation. 
The methods adopted were fixation of price to the 
producer, governmental control of seed and fer- 
tilizer supplies, governmental contributions in farm 
labour at the time of seeding and of harvest. The 
prices fixed were regarded as high, for example, 
the price of wheat for the current year being in the 
neighbourhood of $2.30 a bushel. Governmental 
control of fertilizer did not mean much to the peas- 
ant, since the government had very short stocks of 
phosphate and nitrate, although amply supplied with 
potash. The peasants were supplied with prisoner- 
of-war labour, and reserves were withdrawn from 
the army and sent to the grain fields. During the 
present summer the inactivity on the eastern front 
has enabled the German authorities to divert several 
million men to agricultural labour in Poland, Cour- 
land and Roumania. 

But the sum total of these results has never 
reached the expectations of the authorities. The 
grain crops of '15, '16, and '17 did not equal the 
average of pre-war years. This is merely an ex- 
pression of the fact that war reduces production. 
Despite efforts for the supply of fertilizer and labour 
and despite stimulation of prices, the withdrawal 



74 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of men from the rural population so lowered effi- 
ciency in agricultural operations as to make normal 
crop yields impossible, irrespective of climatic con- 
ditions. Women, children and old men, plus pris- 
oners-of-war and soldiers for brief periods of time, 
deprived in large part of the work animals of the 
farm, do not constitute the equipment with which 
successful agricultural production is maintained. 

Viewed from the statistical point of view, the 
range between successful and unsuccessful produc- 
tion in agriculture was not wide. Had Germany 
possessed large areas of unused land that could 
have been thrown open and operated by crop-tractor 
farming, an increased production of grain might 
have been accomplished ; but Germany had a limited 
acreage in which grain could be sowed. From these 
limited acres she had secured large yields in peace 
time through intensive methods of agriculture. 
Under the stress of war time, the intensive methods 
could not be maintained, and the yields fell. 

The highly specialized nation suffers in warfare 
more than the lowly specialized nation. A com- 
parison between Germany and the United States is 
illuminating from this point of view. Artificial 
fertilizer was applied to every acre of grain field in 
Germany ; in this country it is used to a very small 
percentage of the acreage. The lack of fertilizer in 
war time will not be felt here to anything like the ex- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 75 

tent it is felt in Germany. That which is true for 
grain is also true for other crops. Germany at- 
tempted to increase the yield of potatoes and to re- 
duce the yield of sugar beets. Less sugar beets 
were required because the exportation of sugar was 
abolished. The acreage was cut down also on ac- 
count of the large amount of labour required in cul- 
tivation. The acreage was therefore reduced one- 
fourth; but from this reduced acreage a normal 
crop has not been secured, and the result has been 
that Germany, a sugar-exporting country in time 
of peace, has in time of war been compelled to re- 
duce the sugar ration of her people to practically 
one-half that of peace time. Potatoes return under 
highly specialized conditions of cultivation probably 
more in yield than any other human foodstuffs. 
Success in the raising of potatoes depends tipon 
heavy fertilization, careful selection of seed and 
destruction of parasites, accompanied by favour- 
able climatic conditions. The value of a crop of 
potatoes is also influenced by care in harvesting and 
housing. Germany had a record crop in 191 5; the 
crop of 1916 was very low; the crop of 1917 is 
below normal. 

Once the grain was harvested, Germany attempted 
to minimize its feeding to domesticated animals and 
its use in industry, in order that the grain might go 
to human utilization. The feeding of wheat and 



76 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

rye to animals was strictly forbidden, but the edict 
could never be enforced. The use of barley in the 
manufacture of beer was limited, and the domesti- 
cated animals of Germany were rationed in barley 
and oats. The Germans established for their 
workhorses a scientific ration based upon minimum 
utilization of protein and maximum utilization of 
carbohydrate, and this led to the use of potatoes in 
the horse ration. The inability of the authorities 
to control the use of wheat and rye by the peasants 
was a source of bitter disappointment. It was well 
recognized that everywhere in the world the peasant 
has used his produce in accordance with his individ- 
ual interests ; but it was felt that in Germany, with 
military discipline and Teutonic patriotism, this 
would not be the case. It was therefore a sad 
revelation to the authorities, and above all to the 
social democrats, to find that the German peasant 
conducted himself as every peasant in the world has 
always done, from the standpoint of self-interest in 
the use of the produce of his soil and hands. 

Germany's most severe blow under the blockade 
was the shutting out of imported concentrated feed- 
ing-stuffs. Germany used to import in the pre-war 
period over five million metric tons of concentrates, 
including in this term oil cake and meal, nut meal, 
grains, grain ofifal and tankage. In other words, 
Germany maintained live-stock in excess of the 



THE FOOD PROBLEM TJ 

ability of the land to produce feeding-stuffs for 
these animals. She preferred to maintain live- 
stock, import the feeding-stuffs and produce ani- 
mal products in her own feeding-yards rather than 
import the finished meat products, as was done in 
large part in England. When the blockade was 
made effective Germany was unable to maintain 
her domesticated animals on account of the cutting 
off of the importation of feed. She thereupon de- 
creed that the number of animals should be reduced 
to the scale of domestic- feeding-stuffs ; one-third of 
the swine, all excess of adult cattle, and one-eighth 
of the milch cows were killed. It was the plan of 
the authorities to keep the count of live-stock down 
to the denominated figure. Had this been done, this 
number of cattle could have been maintained in good 
condition and with a fair return in production of 
dairy supplies. It involved of course the killing 
of young animals in the case of cattle and the limi- 
tation of breedng in the case of swine. Had the 
German peasant been convinced that the war would 
last into the fourth year, he might have followed 
this program; but he was not so convinced in the 
spring of 19 15, when the slaughtering of cattle was 
ordered, and instead of keeping down the number of 
animals, they were secretly preserved, with the 
result that a year and a half later the count was 
practically back to normal. But inasmuch as the 



78 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

corresponding feeding-stuffs had not been secured, 
the physical condition of the live-stock was low. 

During the summer of 19 17, the government has 
killed off a great deal of the accumulated stock, de- 
spite the poor physical condition of the animals, in 
order to supply an increased meat ration to make 
up for the extremely low bread ration. Today the 
total of live-stock in Germany is probably in the 
neighbourhood of two-thirds of that of the pre- 
war period; and the physical condition is such as 
to reduce its value to one-half. Should the break- 
down of Russian military operations lead to an 
early peace, either actual or nominal, feeding-stuffs 
of all kinds, especially sunflower meal and grains, 
will be available in amounts that are practically 
unlimited, though it will require time for transpor- 
tation to be so reorganized as to bring the supplies 
to Germany. The grain crops of 191 7, includ- 
ing the yields in Courland, Poland, and Roumania, 
are in excess of those of 1916, and the next Ger- 
man stringency in food supplies will therefore not 
occur until March, 191 8. The roughage crops are 
a failure, which means still further decrease in milk 
production. 

It was extremely important to Germany to main- 
tain the normal milk supply. The children's needs 
had to be met and large amounts were required for 
the army. Owing to the exclusion of foreign con- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 79 

centrated feed and the constant desire of the peasant 
to maintain his stock of milch cows, the total milk 
supply of Germany has fallen considerably below 
the normal. It is perhaps a fair statement to say 
that Germany has not had since the spring of 191 5 
over 60 per cent of the normal milk supply. This 
has been utilized to the best advantage. It has been 
so carefully conserved for children that the disturb- 
ances in nutrition in children that follow upon in- 
sufficiency of milk in the diet have not been observed. 
It has had, however, a serious result upon the Ger- 
man cuisine. It is impossible to prepare foods with- 
out milk or butter or other fat, and have them meet 
the normal taste of the Germans. When the Ger- 
man housewife no longer had milk for use in the 
kitchen and was denied the use of cooking fats, she 
stood helpless before the task of preparation of food ; 
and throughout the last two years the German peo- 
ple have subsisted upon food that to their tastes was 
unnatural and definitely unsatisfying. That the 
milk ration to the children has been well maintained, 
despite the result of such conservation upon the diet 
of the adults, is a tribute to the discipline of the 
German people. 

Viewing the matter by and large, is it clear that 
during the years 1915, 1916 and 191 7 the produc- 
tion of food and feeding-stuffs in Germany was 
not over 75 or 80 per cent of the mean peace-time 



8o THE FOOD PROBLEM 

production. In other words, the program of the 
German authorities for increased production failed ; 
the normal production was not even maintained. If 
Germany continues to conquer territory to the east 
and appropriates the foodstuffs to herself rather 
than leaving them to the inhabitants of the con- 
quered areas, she will be able to bring the produc- 
tion — viewed from the standpoint of what comes 
into Germany for the use of her own people — back 
to a point approaching the normal plane. But from 
the standpoint of production from her own acres, the 
program of stimulation has been a failure, a failure 
that was inherent in the situation of war and in no 
wise a reflection upon the efficiency of agricultural 
science. 

Once the foodstuffs were produced, the German 
authorities attempted to secure an equitable distribu- 
tion through the channels of trade, elimination of 
extortion, suppression of speculation and avoidance 
of waste. There is, under normal conditions, a cer- 
tain differential between the sales price of the pro- 
ducer and the purchase price of the consumer. 
Whenever conditions in trade become abnormal, 
this differential tends to increase; the more ab- 
normal the greater the differential. The net result 
of this operation of the laws of trade, plus the ac- 
tive self-interest of the trading classes, leads to 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 8 I 

the situation that in times of greatest stringency the 
producer secures the least for his produce in com- 
parison to its cost to the consumer. 

The German authorities were determined that the 
differential between sales price to the producer and 
cost price to the consumer should, if possible, be 
maintained in war time at the peace-time level. 
They have been successful with certain commodi- 
ties, unsuccessful with others. Their greatest suc- 
cess was attained with bread. Despite the fact that 
the price of grain was distinctly higher than the 
pre-war level, the cost of bread was maintained at 
practically the pre-war figure. The formula by 
which this was accomplished was one that has been 
worked out in Belgium by the American Relief 
Commission during the first year of the war, and 
runs to the effect that the price of bread per pound 
must not exceed the price of flour per pound. Now, 
since one pound of flour produces about one and 
one-third pounds of bread, the sole profit for the 
baker lay in this difference. A pound of grain 
under ordinary circumstances produces a little less 
than three quarters of a pound of flour, and since 
a pound of flour produces a pound and a third of 
bread it was approximately true to say that a pound 
of grain equals a pound of bread. Since the dif- 
ferential between grain and flour was relatively low 



82 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the end result was that the price of bread per pound 
to the consumer was practically the same as the 
price of grain per pound to the producer. 

In order to maintain this situation, the German 
authorities were compelled to practise rather exten- 
sive dilution of flour. This dilution was of little 
importance so long as it was carried out by the use 
of other grains for mixing; but it became of nutri- 
tive importance when this was no longer done, and 
the stretching of the flour was carried out with 
potato. The mixing of potato with grain flour re- 
sults in a distinct lowering in the nutritive qualities 
of the bread, since it amounted to little more than 
the addition of starch. When the German bread 
contained as much as 30 per cent of potato, it repre- 
sented a reduction from the standpoint of protein 
of practically one-third. Nevertheless, when all 
is said and done, the fact that the German authori- 
ties have been able to maintain the pre-war price of 
bread represents an achievement of extreme impor- 
tance from the standpoint of psychology and eco- 
nomics of the diet. 

Whenever it became apparent to the authorities 
that it was not practicable with a commodity to keep 
the price to the producer and the purchase price to 
the consumer within speaking distance, so to speak, 
it could either allow the condition to remain as an 
irreparable situation, or cover the difference through 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 83 

the appropriation of state funds. The latter plan 
was adopted in the case of the potato. The gov- 
ernment fixed a sales price for the producer of po- 
tatoes, determined a fair price for the consumer 
and itself appropriated money to cover the differ- 
ence. Sugar beets, under the complete control of 
the government, have been carefully conserved. 
The price of the beets was fixed. The differential to 
the refiners and the sales price to the consumer 
were fixed, and the difference between the price paid 
for beets and the retail price of sugar is not ma- 
terially greater than that obtaining in peace time. 

But, in the case of meats, dairy products, fruits 
and vegetables, the attempt to keep a normal dis- 
tance between the producer's price and the consum- 
er's price was a failure. In general, apart from 
sugar and wheat, maximum prices to the consumer 
have been a failure. Evasion was easy and con- 
stantly practised, the evasion taking the form of 
direct communication, outside of the state chan- 
nels of trade, between the producer in the country 
and the consumer of means in the city. The maxi- 
mum prices for the consumer applied only to the 
industrial workers in the large cities, in other words, 
to the Social Democrats, and this has resulted in a 
sentiment among the working classes of extreme 
embitterment towards the agrarians and also in a 
different attitude towards the war. 



84 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

Apart from the achievements in price control and 
distribution, the German results in commercial con- 
trol have been negligible. Extortion has not been 
prevented, speculation has not been checked, and 
distribution has not been equitable. In the case of 
bread and sugar success was obtained ; in the case of 
all other commodities, failure resulted. When the 
data are carefully analysed, it is seen that the fac- 
tor determining success or failure lay ultimately in 
the perishability of the product. Grain and sugar 
lend themselves to regulation. The perishability 
of dairy products, meats, fruits and vegetables lend 
themselves naturally to extortion, speculation and 
inequitable distribution. But they do not lend 
themselves to hoarding, whereas grain and sugar 
do lend themselves to hoarding; here the situation 
was reversed. The people of means could secure 
more than their, share of dairy products, meats, fruits 
and vegetables through price manipulation and cir- 
cumvention of the regulations that were impossible 
to the working classes. On the other hand, the 
classes of means could secure more than their legal 
share of flour and sugar because these could be 
hoarded, whereas hoarding was impossible to the 
poor because of lack of money. Under these cir- 
cumstances, the natural trend of events worked to 
the advantage of the well-to-do classes and to the 
disadvantage of the poor. The most intense class 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 85 

feeling arises from inequality in alimentation, since 
it represents inequality in the carrying of the bur- 
dens of the war. But it is a curious commentary 
upon the psychology of people that inequality in 
the direct load of military burdens is borne with 
apparent equanimity whereas inequality in the eco- 
nomic or nutritional burdens of war provokes in- 
tense class hatred. 

The machinery for the control of distribution was 
both destructive and constructive — destructive in 
the sense that it involved wiping out middlemen, 
limitation in the number of wholesalers and re- 
tailers, and exclusion of all jobbers and commis- 
sion merchants between the producer and the whole- 
saler and between the wholesaler and the retailer. 
As finally elaborated, the constructive machinery 
determines through what hands the foodstuffs pro- 
duced in Germany pass, fixes the number of whole- 
salers and retailers, the prices that they are allowed 
to charge, the turn-over they are allowed for them- 
selves, and for the consumer fixes the retailer from 
whom he is permitted to purchase. That this ma- 
chinery involves a huge staff is obvious. It is, 
however, a striking commentary on the machinery 
of commercial distribution in peace time to state 
that a careful census in Germany has indicated that 
the official machinery for the control of distribu- 
tion, plus the economic machine retained from the 



86 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

pre-war period, represents only about one-half the 
number of individuals engaged in the pre-war period 
in the distribution of the same commodities. This 
experience of Germany has confirmed in a conclu- 
sive manner the contention of social thinkers to the 
effect that the trading class is over-populated, the 
articles passing from producer to the consumer 
through a number of unnecessary hands, a number 
not determined by exigencies in the trade, but solely 
by the profits to be derived therefrom. On the 
other hand it is apparent that the rigid reduction in 
the trading class is accompanied by a limitation of 
freedom to the producer and to the consumer that 
is keenly felt by both. There is less freedom to sell 
and to buy in Germany; with this loss of freedom, 
however, there is greater efficiency in the act of sell- 
ing and buying. Whether a people in peace time 
would prefer to have a higher efficiency in selling 
and buying with less of individual freedom to buy 
and sell as one chooses, is an entirely different ques- 
tion. 

It is also an interesting commentary on the psy- 
chology of a people to realize that despite patriotism 
and discipline, Germans of means never hesitated 
to circumvent the food laws in order to secure from 
the producing class foodstuffs whose sale was con- 
trary to regulations. Despite constant appeal by 
the authorities that success in the war depended in 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 87 

part Upon the maintenance of the food regulations, 
producers were always willing to break them, and 
so were the consumers with means. This does not 
mean lack of patriotism. It means that individuals 
are not able to visualize the situation and do not 
believe that their offences against food regulations 
result in a lowering of the probability of success in 
military undertakings. The needs of the industrial 
relations of war as distinguished from the military 
operations lie outside of the power of visualization 
of the average individual. This is true in this 
country now and will continue to remain true as the 
war continues. Whosoever in war time demands 
'* business as usual " is acting contrary to the forces 
operating for success in carrying on the war; 
and yet the very men who do so contend for '' busi- 
ness as usual " in war time would not in the least 
hesitate to send their own sons to the front. They 
do not seem to realize that their behaviour in the 
conduct of their business increases the risk to the 
lives of their own enlisted sons. The cattle raiser 
who wishes to take advantage of high speculative 
price of livestock, the wheat grower who desires to 
obtain the profits to be derived from unrestricted 
competitive buying by the frenzied nations at war, 
the labourer who attempts to force the highest wage 
on the basis of supply and demand, and the coal 
operator w^ho capitalizes the contest between in- 



88 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

dustrial and fireside demands for coal, all fail to 
visualize the situation as it actually exists and do 
not realize that their point of view jeopardizes the 
successful carrying on of the war. 

The German consumers, regarded as a unit, ex- 
pected four things from the national food adminis- 
tration: I, a ration adequate to their physio- 
logical and psychological needs ; 2, a price for food- 
stuffs that would enable the wage to cover the cost 
of living; 3, equitable distribution throughout the 
different classes of society; and 4, guarantee of the 
ration allotment. The failure to succeed fully 
hinged entirely upon the failure to secure the third 
stipulation, that of equitable distribution. Had it 
been possible to divide in a strictly pro rata fashion 
the foodstuffs available within the German Empire, 
it would have been possible to supply to all an ade- 
quate ration at a bearable price and to have guaran- 
teed it. But these three desiderata were not accom- 
plished because the producer class, the agrarians 
(who comprise about 25,000,000 out of the total 
population) consumed more than their pro rata of 
foodstuffs, diverted a portion of the foodstuffs to 
the feeding of domesticated animals, and sold to the 
well-to-do classes in disregard of the regulations. 

The brunt of the situation was borne by the in- 
dustrial workers, a group that probably includes 
20,000,000 people, and comprises in the political 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 89 

sense the entire Social Democratic adherents, who 
were never able to secure the ration to which they 
were entitled. They did secure the ration of bread 
and sugar that was legally allotted to them; but 
the legal allowance of bread and sugar was less 
than should have been allotted on the basis of Ger- 
man production and itself represented a failure in 
the application of the principle of equitable distribu- 
tion. Germany had bread grains enough to have 
guaranteed a flour ration of 300 grams per capita 
per day. When it came to the allocation of bread 
grains the situation was so manipulated as to make 
it appear that no such amount could be guaranteed. 
The first ration was fixed at 225 grams, later at 
200, during a portion of the past year it was as low 
as 175, and is now to be restored to 220. A cal- 
culation of the officially reported grain crops of Ger- 
many on the basis of the established regulations for 
milling indicates that 200 grams of flour per capita 
per day did not exhaust the flour potentiality of the 
German grain; it could have furnished 300. 

In the matter of price the Germans accomplished 
a repression of the prices of bread and sugar to 
those that approximated the conditions in peace 
time. The 1950-gram loaf of bread has sold at 
from 68 to 74 pfennigs. This is less than 5 cents 
a pound and represents a marked contrast to the 
price of bread in the United States. The price of 



90 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

sugar has been held in the neighbourhood of 8 
cents per pound, which approximates the price in 
this country. In no other direction has it been 
possible to hold the price down to the point de- 
manded by the wage scale. Milk at 8 cents, the 
cheapest butter at 6o cents and the lowest-grade 
meats at 40 cents do not represent prices that lie 
within the purchasing power of the wage earner of 
Germany today, and there is absolute truth in the 
contention of the Social Democrats that the wage- 
earning classes of Germany during the past year 
and a half have lost in capital as a result of in- 
ability to meet the cost of living upon the scale of 
wages provided. 

Since May, 191 6, it has not been possible for the 
food administration of Germany to provide the 
20,000,000 persons of the industrial class with a 
ration that can be regarded as adequate for the 
maintenance of health, body weight and the support 
of physical work. One of the three had to be sac- 
rificed and the first to be sacrificed was body weight. 
The industrial classes of Germany, who have re- 
ceived not to exceed 2000 calories per capita per day 
for non-working individuals, have lost weight ; they 
are trained down hard like athletes. There was 
no evidence in Germany up to March, 191 7, that 
the health of these individuals had suffered; there 
was no increase of infectious disease and no ab- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 9 I 

normality in the death rate. No evidence has been 
adduced since that time to indicate that the health 
of the working classes has been undermined by 
their restricted diet. Indications are, however, ap- 
pearing that the output of work is failing and this 
is the natural sequence of events since weight is 
first lost, then work is reduced, and finally health 
impaired as the diet is progressively lowered. The 
Germans have paid particular attention to the ali- 
mentation of their children. They have not been 
sacrificed to any demonstrable extent; and indeed 
the almost total withdrawal of milk from the diet 
of adults and in the preparation of food in order 
that it might be conserved for children represents 
an illustration of the far-sighted policy that was 
adopted. That the restrictions in the diet during the 
past year and a half have fallen almost entirely upon 
the industrial workers of the cities is fully realized 
by the industrial classes and represents a casus belli 
between them and the agrarians that will be the oc- 
casion of bitter political contests after the war. 
The harsh treatment inflicted by the peasants during 
the past summer upon city children sent to the coun- 
try for recuperation has only intensified this bitter- 
ness. 

How long the German industrial classes can hold 
out on the present diet cannot be stated. The writ- 
ers do not believe that it could ever be possible to 



92 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

starve out Germany, even if she v^ere shut v^ithin 
her own borders, except in the event of unusual 
crop failure. The purpose of the food blockade is 
not to starve Germany but to compel her to produce 
all of her foodstuffs, and thus have to v^ithdraw 
labour, capital and organization from industrial lines 
directly contributing to the war. There is evidence 
that the crops of Germany and Austria-Hungary, 
including those of Courland, Poland, Roumania and 
Servia, will this year enable considerably larger ra- 
tions to be allotted to the working people. To 
what extent the increments, largely in grain, will be 
counterbalanced by sharper application of the block- 
ade and reduction of importations into Germany 
from surrounding countries remains to be seen. 

The German government failed to guarantee any 
ration except the bread ration and the milk ration 
for children under the sixth year of life. Other- 
wise, it was in large part '^ first come, first served " 
during the first year and a half of the war; and since 
that time the authorities have made pro rata reduc- 
tions from the stated ration in the event of strin- 
gency of the supply. It was not always possible to 
allot a pound of sugar a month. Even the bread 
ration was at times impossible of fulfilment, but 
this was countered through substitution, more po- 
tato being issued. The attempt was always made to 
secure in substitution an equal value in terms of nu- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 93 

tritional units, though naturally when potato was 
substituted for bread, the ration was lower in pro- 
tein. In connection with fat, it has been particularly 
difficult to guarantee the ration and this has led to 
progressive reduction so that for months at a time 
the fat ration issued in many German cities has been 
as low as two ounces per capita per week, and 
rarely over three ounces. The allotted ration of 
fruit and vegetables represented little more than 
privilege of purchase if it could be secured. 

Waste in foodstuffs occurs throughout the en- 
tire chain of transfers from the original producer 
to the final consumer. For certain commodities 
the waste in the hands of the producer is high, in the 
hands of the consumer low. For other commodi- 
ties, the waste is low with the producer and high 
with the consumer. In some of the commodities the 
chief waste lies in distribution. Everywhere in the 
conservation of food supplies, the problem of waste 
must receive the most critical attention ; and extreme 
and persistent efforts are required to eliminate waste 
through education of the producer, the trade and 
the consumer in methods of conservation. 

Along these lines the Germans have achieved a 
most signal success during the war. Indeed, a care- 
ful survey made in Germany during the summer of 
19 16 indicated that, apart from certain untoward 
happenings — which might really be called accidents 



94 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

in distribution — waste in foodstuffs in Germany 
had been almost eliminated. There is good evi- 
dence that waste in the large sense of the word in- 
cluded an almost unbelievable fraction in peace 
time. For example, according to the official Ger- 
man statement of their food resources, there was 
provided in Germany in the pre-war period food for 
each individual per day to the amount of some 3600 
calories. It was the judgment of German scien- 
tists that not to exceed a per capita of 2800 calories 
at the outside was actually consumed, leaving a 
waste of 800 calories, or practically 22 per cent of 
the food provided. 

A survey of the food resources of this country 
indicates that a similar waste occurs in this coun- 
try. One of the curious things about this fraction 
of waste is its apparent immutability with a peo- 
ple except under conditions of such stress as to call 
forth systematized organization for conservation. 
If in a particular country the food resources pro- 
vide a per capita food supply of 3600 calories and 
the food consumption is 2800 calories, leaving a 
waste of 800 calories, one might imagine at first 
sight that if the food resources were to fall to 3500 
calories, the consumption would be maintained at 
2800 and the waste reduced to 700 calories. This, 
however, does not occur at first; instead, if the 
food provided is reduced from 3600 to 3500 calor- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 95 

ies, it will be found that the consumption will be 
reduced from 2800 to 2700 calories, and the waste 
maintained. In other words, our habits of con- 
sumption are more flexible and adaptable than our 
habits of waste; and it is only when systematized 
education in the direction of conservation and the 
elimination of waste is carried on that the people 
as a unit so act as to have the reduction in food 
provided fall upon the waste rather than upon the 
consumption. 

When it is recalled that, in accordance with trade 
figures, the food provided in Germany in the pre- 
war period offered some 3600 calories and that the 
per capita consumption (on the basis of the non- 
working individual) in German industrial cities has 
for over a year been in the neighbourhood of 2000, 
one realizes clearly that the largest fraction of this 
reduction has been obtained, not through reduction 
of food consumption but through reduction in waste. 
One of the difficulties in the estimation of the 
degree of reduction that a people can endure in 
food supply lies in our inability to separate the 
factors of restriction in the diet from elimination 
of waste. It has been a common statement of 
students of nutrition that the diet of a people can- 
not be reduced 25 per cent from the customary plane 
without influence upon health. The German ex- 
perience indicates that this is not true. It is prob- 



96 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

ably true that a diet cannot be reduced over 25 
per cent from the figure of actual ingestion; but 
this does not mean that the food of a people as 
provided in initial production cannot be reduced 
over 25 per cent, because a large portion of this re- 
duction may fall upon waste. It is probable that 
the food consumption in the home of the French 
peasant represents the maximum of efficiency, that 
is, there is the least waste; but even in France, as 
a nation, the food supply at present is, from the 
standpoint of total units and taking into considera- 
tion the increased physical labours of war, 20 or 
25 per cent below that of the pre-war period. It 
is necessary that the general public should differenti- 
ate clearly between repression of consumption and 
repression of waste, though in the tabular sense they 
appear in the same columns. From the practical 
point of view, the more successful the elimination 
of waste, the less necessary the repression of con- 
sumption; and indeed excessive consumption be- 
yond the needs of the body represents as definite 
and indefensible a form of waste as the actual 
throwing away of food into garbage. 

There is a reverse side to the psychology of a 
campaign against waste that deserves a momentary 
consideration. Every duty imposed upon civilians 
in a period of such unprecedented stress as the pres- 
ent is liable to provoke a reflex reaction of aversion. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 97 

The pressure now being applied in the European 
household to eliminate waste is intense. The dis- 
cipline has become so irksome, its minutiae so ir- 
ritating, that the women of Germany — as one 
clear-visioned woman said to the writer — long for 
the day when wasting will be again permitted. In 
particular is this true of the working classes. It 
is the working classes who know how to conserve 
against waste in times of peace. Of the waste in 
American homes, three-fourths occurs in one-fourth 
of the homes. From the standpoint of nutritional 
values, in a campaign of education against waste the 
greatest success is achieved in homes where there is 
the least waste, because here the financial pressure 
is greatest. Under these circumstances, care must 
be exercised in not forcing home a campaign against 
waste with such irksomeness in minutiae as to bear 
too heavily upon the poorest classes and provoke a 
psychological revolt. 

All in all the nutrition of the individual classes in 
Germany during the last year and a half has been 
a revelation to the scientific world, even without 
considering the question as to the ultimate results 
of such a reduction in the diet. The industrial 
classes of Germany have demonstrated that millions 
of hard working men and women can subsist and 
work in apparent good health, though reduced in 
weight, upon two-thirds of the diet previously re- 



98 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

garded as a minimum. Curiously enough, in the 
controversies that have been v^aged for years over 
the minimum in nutrition, the German scientists 
have usually stood out for high values, and it has 
thus been their lot to observe in their ov^n country 
the contradiction of their theories through the suc- 
cessful demonstration of the adequacy of the lov^ in- 
takes that were long contended for by physiologists 
outside of Germany and especially in the United 
States. 

Viewed as a whole, the rationing system of Ger- 
many cannot be regarded as having been more than 
a partial success. Such success as it has attained 
has been due to the highly organized discipline and 
minute administrative control characteristic of the 
German people and their government. At the same 
time some of the failures were due to the very same 
qualities, especially to the administrative detail. 
There is no question that the rationing of the Ger- 
man people has been less successfully accomplished 
than the rationing of the Belgian people under the 
Commission for Relief in Belgium. The difference 
may be attributed largely to the superiority of a 
system of decentralization, aiming at 80 per cent 
efficiency, operating through the principle of cen- 
tralized control, aiming at 95 per cent efficiency. 
Maximum prices for the consumer have proved for 
the most part a failure. Guarantee of ration has 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 99 

been for the most part a failure. The substitutions 
have been in part a success from the nutritional 
point of view, but cannot be regarded as a success 
from the point of view of the tastes of the indus- 
trial classes concerned. Certainly if a rationing 
system cannot succeed in Germany it cannot hope 
to succeed anywhere. 



PART II 
THE TECHNOLOGY OF FOOD USE 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF NUTRITION 

In the contemplation of a diet four factors must 
be taken into consideration, two intrinsic and two 
extrinsic. The two intrinsic factors are determined 
by the physiology of nutrition and the psychology of 
alimentation. The external factors are the supply 
of foodstuffs and the influence of trade. Under 
ordinary conditions in the life of a nation, with cer- 
tain commodities the factors of supply and trade 
have as much influence on the selection of a diet 
as the factors of nutrition and psychology. At 
first sight it might appear that the factor of supply 
must necessarily predominate over the influence of 
trade, and this is of course true in the final analysis; 
but with a supply that is to be regarded as normal 
and sufficient, influence of trade operates so as to 
place certain foods in positions of predominance and 
others in positions of subordination that do not at 
all correspond to the essential values. 

The influence of trade is a composite. It includes 
elements of production (including fertilizer, cost 
of labour, price of machinery, transportation and 

103 



I04 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

climatic conditions) ; nationalities of consumers in 
different zones; trade policies; the influence of ad- 
vertising and publicity; artificial manipulation of 
markets, beginning with the primary market and 
extending through the entire chain of distribution 
to the consumer; and includes finally a factor that 
may be termed ** the psychology of trade," a definite 
tendency of commodities to move in certain direc- 
tions that is not fully capable of analysis on the 
basis of known economic and commercial relations, 
but which is, in the final estimation, probably an ex- 
pression of the efficiency of particular individuals. 

In the diet of a people, all of these factors play a 
role in times of peace and prosperity. The greater 
the prosperity and the freer the choice of individual 
action, the less influential is the factor of the physio- 
logical nutrition of the body. With complete free- 
dom of choice, divested of the influence of the four 
factors described, wide scope is afforded for the 
personal variable that extends from individualism 
to idiosyncrasy, an expression of the democratic 
viewpoint in relation to the personal habits of the 
individual. 

Under conditions of stress the factors of physi- 
ology of nutrition and supply of foodstuffs assume 
more and more predominance over the factors of 
influence of trade and psychology of the diet. Ef- 
forts to influence the consumption of foodstuffs by 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 105 

a people He in the direction of giving greater pre- 
dominance to the facts of nutrition from the purely 
physiological standpoint, under the existing condi- 
tions of supply. Uncontrolled, this is liable to re- 
sult in harsh repression of the psychology of the 
diet on the one hand and in reckless elimination of 
the influence of trade on the other. Particularly the 
exclusion of the psychological relations of the diet 
is a mistake easily accomplished but difficult of re- 
pairment. The ideal adjustment is a composite 
of all factors; for a people as a whole it is better 
to secure a moderate degree of efficiency in the bal- 
ancing of all factors than to secure a high degree 
of efficiency in one group, as that of physiological 
alimentation, viewed as animal nutrition. 

In order that the average individual possessed of 
a general education and the cultured viewpoint of 
American citizenship, but devoid of technical train- 
ing, may be able to understand the subject of nutri- 
tion from the standpoint of the four named factors, 
it is necessary that the principal facts known to hold 
in the nutrition of the animal body be understood. 

From the standpoint of nutrition the body is a 
machine — a complicated machine — and, of course, 
something more than a machine. Viewed from the 
standpoint of energy relations (that is, the produc- 
tion of heat and the conversion of energy into work) 
the animal body presents a strict analogy to a ma- 



I06 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

chine. With a well-designed motor, one may per- 
form work involving the use of gasoline possessing 
one hundred units of heat, as determined by analy- 
sis and measurement of the heat In the working 
of this motor, it will be found on measurement that 
from 25 to 30 per cent of the energy of the fuel, 
according to circumstances in the design of the mo- 
tor, will be converted into work ; the remainder will 
be converted into heat and dissipated as such. 
When a labourer performs a similar act of work, 
it will be found that fuel has been burned in an 
entirely analogous manner, and that of the energy 
contained in the fuel consumed, between 25 and 30 
per cent will be converted into work and the bal- 
ance converted into heat and dissipated. The per- 
centage of fuel converted as work is termed the 
mechanical efficiency of the machine, and the effi- 
ciency of a soldier on the march is about the same 
as that of the engine of the truck that is hauling 
the ammunition. When the man becomes tired his 
efficiency falls; when the engine departs from ac- 
curate adjustment, its efficiency falls. If for any 
reason in internal economy the burning of food- 
stuffs in the body is imperfect, as is the case in cer- 
tain diseases, then the efficiency falls; if in the ad- 
justment of the carburetor the burning of the gaso- 
line is imperfect, the efficiency of the motor falls. 
Viewed more closely, the animal body presents 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 10/ 

striking differences from even the perfect machine. 
The machine must be repaired; the animal body is 
self -repairing. The machine must be lubricated in 
addition to having fuel supply; the animal body is 
self-lubricating in the sense that what might be com- 
pared to the lubricants of the machine are produced 
within the body. Lubrication, upkeep and replace- 
ment are all external in the motor, internal in the 
body. A machine must be built by external hands ; 
the animal body possesses the power of multiplica- 
tion of the species. The human body possesses 
finally the power of self -direction of its operations; 
the machine lacks entirely the power of self-direc- 
tion except such as may be mechanically introduced 
and maintained. 

A clear distinction must be made between the 
energy equivalents of heat and muscular work on 
the one hand and of other physiological functions 
and mental operations on the other hand. A man 
lying in perfect quiet, performing mental operations 
of prodigious intensity, will produce no more body 
heat, according to our present methods of measure- 
ment, than if his mind were not engaged. The 
movement of a nerve impulse down a nerve can be 
shown by extremely minute methods of measure- 
ment to be accompanied by evolution of heat; but 
applied to an entire body the amount of heat that 
must accompany mental operations is so small as to 



I08 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

fall within the range of error of measurement of 
heat involved in the maintenance of the body tem- 
perature. Practically, therefore, fuel is not re- 
quired for mental work ; and no more foodstuffs are 
required for a sedentary man engaged in mental 
operations than in idleness. 

A number of other physiological functions, such 
as the influence of the ductless glands and tiie oper- 
ation of the special senses, possess heat relations so 
minimal as to be of no importance when considered 
from the standpoint of the food requirements of 
the body. Therefore, for practical purposes we 
may say that the fuel needs of the body are repre- 
sented solely by two requirements ; requirement for 
heat to maintain the body temperature of the resting 
body and the requirement of energy for the main- 
tenance of the muscular work of respiration, circu- 
lation, alimentation, and physical exertion. It is 
convenient to separate rather arbitrarily the factors 
of heat production and muscular work from those 
of repair and upkeep of the adult body and growth 
of the young body, both in the qualitative and quan- 
titative sense. 

The factors involved in these various relations of 
nutrition may be classified under six headings to 
which must be added two that are of importance in 
the act of digestion and therefore secondarily of 
importance to the state of nutrition. The first six 



THE FOOD PROBLEM IO9 

are protein, fat, carbohydrate, mineral salts, vita- 
mines, and water; the two alimentary factors are 
bacteria and indigestible residue of the diet. 

PROTEIN 

Under the term protein we understand all sub- 
stances allied to what is commonly termed albumin, 
— as the casein of milk, the white of tggy the plasma 
of muscles, gelatine, and the serum of blood. Pro- 
tein is the substance of which flesh is primarily com- 
posed. Blood contains about 8 per cent of protein; 
the white of egg about 12 per cent; lean meat about 
20 per cent; the common grains about 10 per cent; 
milk a little over 3 per cent; some of the beans as 
high as 30 per cent ; potatoes a little over i per cent, 
etc. All living organisms, plant or animal, are, in 
the final analysis, composed of cells and structures 
derived from cells. The essential component of the 
cell is termed protoplasm and the chief constituent 
of protoplasm is protein. 

Protein is not a unit substance. There are many 
kinds of protein and the variations are due to differ- 
ences in composition. Proteins are organic sub- 
stances of so large a molecular size that the individ- 
ual molecules can be seen under a microscope when 
viewed with oblique illumination. Proteins are 
composed of aggregations of simpler substances 
known as amino-acids. About 20 amino-acids are 



no THE FOOD PROBLEM 

known and the different proteins contain variable 
numbers of these. It is the variation in components 
and in the amount of the several components that 
causes the physical and chemical differences in pro- 
teins. All proteins are, in their final analysis, of 
vegetable derivation; and animal proteins represent 
transfers to the animal body of amino-acids created 
in plant life. One gram of protein yields to the 
body 4.2 calories of heat. 

The structure of proteins may be compared to 
the architecture of a house. A house contains brick, 
stone, concrete, plaster, glass, floors, roofing, doors, 
windows, iron pipes, etc. An architect could con- 
struct out of the same materials in the same amounts 
houses that would present entirely different external 
and internal appearances; and in a similar way pro- 
teins exist, consisting of the identical amino-acids 
in practically identical proportions, that have differ- 
ent chemical and physical properties depending upon 
the architecture, that is, the manner in which the 
different amino-acids are built together. It has 
thus become a common expression to term the 
amino-acids the " building stones of protein." 

Now the animal body must receive in the diet the 
amino-acids from which it builds its own proteins. 
Certain amino-acids can be formed in the body, but 
other amino-acids cannot be formed in the body 
and the diet must contain them. These amino-acids 



THE FOOD PROBLEM III 

we Speak of as the indispensable amino-acids. 
When a protein contains all of the amino-acids or 
contains the indispensable ones and the others in 
such amounts as to enable the body to fill its require- 
ments, we speak of this as a complete or balanced 
protein. If, however, the protein is deficient in 
certain of the essential amino-acids or contains a 
large preponderance of some one of the other amino- 
acids, we speak of the protein as incomplete or un- 
balanced. The balanced protein is able to fulfil all 
of the protein requirements of an animal body; the 
unbalanced protein is not. When an animal is fed 
a diet of unbalanced protein, growth cannot be main- 
tained and if the defect be serious enough, the ani- 
mal will waste. 

The amount of protein required in the diet de- 
pends upon two variables : ( i ) Upon the inten- 
sity of wear and tear and upkeep in the particular 
animal concerned; and (2) upon the nature of the 
proteins of the diet, whether balanced or unbalanced. 
With a particular animal, if the diet contains bal- 
anced proteins a much smaller amount will be re- 
quired than if the diet contained only unbalanced 
proteins. In general, less protein of animal origin 
is required to maintain equilibrium than with the 
use of plant protein. 

Assuming that the proteins in the diet are bal- 
anced or within the range of adaptation, the amount 



112 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of protein required in the animal body is surprisingly 
small. Growth consists of dimensional and numer- 
ical increase. Certain cells, like the cells in the 
blood and the lining cells of the skin and mucous 
membranes, have a Hmited span of life; they die 
and must be replaced. Other cells, however, en- 
dure for the entire life of the individual. The 
number of cells in the biceps muscle of the new- 
born child is the same as will be present when that 
child has developed to maturity; the growth con- 
sists entirely in increase in the dimensions of the 
cells. Now the requirements of growth for a day 
are so small that they scarcely appear in comparison 
to the wear and tear needs of the day. In practi- 
cal dietetics, a growing child of a certain weight 
requires very little more protein than an adult of 
that same weight. The chief concern in the diet of 
a growing child is not the amount of protein, but 
the presence of balanced protein. While the total 
amount of protein per unit of weight is very little 
less in the growing child than in the adult, the 
amount of essential amino-acids is distinctly larger. 
For this reason it is particularly important in the 
diet of the child to secure a large percentage of the 
intake of protein in the form of balanced protein, 
namely, that of milk. It is a safe rule that 40 per 
cent of the protein of the diet of growing children 
should be balanced protein obtained from animal 



THE FOOD PROBLEM II3 

products. In the case of the adult, this may safely 
fall to less than 20 per cent. 

This does not mean that vegetarianism in the 
strict sense is impossible. It is possible, but it is 
difficult. A person having at his disposal a wide 
variety of cereals and plants for selection could ob- 
tain a diet balanced in protein, although the amount 
of protein eaten to insure this would have to be 
larger than when animal products are used. Vege- 
tarianism is much more difficult with the child than 
with the adult. It is difficult, although possible, to 
raise a child without milk, eggs, or meat; it is not 
in the least difficult, under conditions of modern 
markets, for an adult to practise strict vegetarianism 
with success. It will mean a large and bulky diet, 
and probably an expensive diet; but the balanced 
protein can be secured for the adult without much 
difficulty. 

If the proteins be balanced a gram of protein a 
day per kilo weight is more than sufficient to cover 
all of the needs of the body, the wear and tear and 
upkeep. It is also sufficient to cover the needs of 
growth in the young. The mother's milk contains 
less than 10 per cent of its energy in the form of 
protein, but it maintains the highest intensity of 
growth in the life of the individual. Obviously, the 
amount of protein, if balanced, contained in mother's 
milk, would be sufficient for any later period. 



114 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

Under upkeep and wear and tear we understand 
that cells in the act of fuctioning, like machinery in 
operation, undergo breakdowns. There must be 
replacements within cells ; just as a particular piece 
of a gasoline motor, like a piston ring, may break 
and have to be replaced, so a small portion of living 
cells 'disintegrates and must be replaced. This wear 
and tear and upkeep is the largest fraction of the 
protein turn-over of the body. 

If more protein is ingested than is required to 
maintain growth, wear and tear and upkeep, it is 
destroyed in the body. The body does not store 
in the sense that the body stores fat. No matter 
how great the excess of protein beyond the needs 
of the body, the needless protein is destroyed and 
end-products appear in the urine. Now, since pro- 
tein is an expensive form of food to produce in na- 
ture and, therefore, expensive in the market, we 
ought to reduce the ingestion of protein to some- 
where near the point of need. Protein consumed in 
excess of the tissue needs becomes a mere fuel, but 
a very expensive form of fuel and one that pos- 
sesses in addition a residue to be eliminated in the 
urine. The diflference between sugar and protein 
as fuel may be compared to the difference between 
crude oil and coal. Sugar burns completely and 
leaves no ash ; protein burns incompletely and leaves 
an ash and this ash must be eliminated, imposing 



THE FOOD PROBLEM II5 

Upon the kidneys a useless labour, comparable to re- 
moving ashes from a grate. Certainly no engineer 
would use a coal with ashes if he could for the 
same price or a smaller price use an ashless fuel; 
and whenever protein is consumed in excess of the 
tissue needs, it amounts to selecting deliberately a 
fuel with a large ash instead of a fuel with no 
ash. 

The consumption of protein is high in new coun- 
tries where there is a large amount of land per 
capita, with many head of live stock per capita; 
it is low in countries of congested population 
where the per capita of domesticated animals 
is low. The consumption of protein is high with 
people of means and low in a nation of poverty. 
Thus the highest consumption of protein is seen in 
Australia and New Zealand; the lowest consump- 
tion is seen in India, Japan, and China. The con- 
sumption in the United States and England is high, 
as an expression of wealth. The consumption of 
protein in the form of meat varies largely in differ- 
ent nations ; the ingestion of plant protein does not 
vary so widely. 

Intense controversy has occurred during recent 
years as to whether meat possesses in the diet prop- 
erties that are not yet measurable on the basis of 
either analysis or experience. It is contended that 
the strength and virility, in the physical and intel- 



Il6 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

lectual senses, that together constitute the forces of 
civilization as seen in the Anglo-Saxon race, as dis- 
tinguished from the Chinese or East Indian, are due 
to the greater consumption of meat. This argu- 
ment is not valid. The consumption of meat is 
much higher in Australia and Nev^ Zealand than in 
England. The consumption of meat in this coun- 
try was much higher 40 years ago than it has been 
in France for a long time — as long, indeed, as rec- 
ords exist there. Now^, no one will contend that 
Americans possess attributes in any direction not 
possessed by the French that can be reasonably as- 
cribed to our greater ingestion of meat. When one 
compares a sallow, anaemic East Indian with a 
rugged Englishman it is easy to be led astray and 
to ascribe the difference to the meat in the diet of 
the Englishman as against the cereal in the diet of 
the East Indian; but there are so many factors to 
be taken into account that no such conclusion is 
warranted. There are vegetarian peoples who are 
as rugged in comparison to the East Indian as is 
the Englishman. The Englishman is free of in- 
testinal parasites, whereas practically all East In- 
dians harbour one or many varieties of intestinal 
parasites. The hookworm campaign in our coun- 
try has afforded to our people an illustration of the 
veritable transformation to be accomplished in a 
people without change of diet, simply by removal 



THE FOOD PROBLEM II/ 

of intestinal parasites. The diet of the East Indian 
is not merely a vegetable diet ; it is a poor vegetable 
diet. For the growing child there is no question 
that protein of animal origin is very desirable and, 
indeed, from a practical point of view in the diet- 
ing of communities, indispensable; but after the 
fraction of protein known to be essential — for the 
adult, 20 per cent of one gram daily per kilo body 
weight — has been covered by the ingestion of pro- 
tein of animal origin, it is immaterial with what 
protein the balance of the intake is covered, and 
there is no gain in an ingestion of protein in excess 
of the denominated amount. The average inges- 
tion in America is at least 50 per cent in excess of 
need. 

FAT 

•A certain amount of native fat is required in the 
diet. Fat exists in the protoplasm of every cell. 
The body forms fat from sugar easily; therefore, 
the necessary factor in native fat is not the chem- 
ical substance, fat. If the fat intake falls below 
a certain figure, especially with the child, disturb- 
ances of nutrition ensue. Now the amount of fat 
concerned is so small that the body could easily se- 
cure this amount from sugar. In this fat intake 
are two factors : one relating to the essential proc- 
esses of growth, the other relating to less essential 



Il8 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

relations in a diet. One gram of fat yields to the 
body 9.3 calories of heat. 

A diet low in fat does not lend itself to our nor- 
mal types of cooking. Foods prepared without 
fat are not naturally cooked and do not suit the 
taste. A diet low in fat is rapidly digested and 
inasmuch as the sense of satiation in alimentation 
is in part connected with the duration of the process 
of digestion, fat-free foods do not give the normal 
satisfaction. These two factors, the use of fat in 
cooked food and the acceleration of the process of 
digestion in the absence of fat, account for the 
dissatisfaction felt in Germany at present with the 
low fat intake. This is in part a matter of habit; 
the low fat intake in Germany today is as high as 
the normal fat intake, weight for weight, in Japan. 
Indigestion may ensue in any individual who con- 
tinuously follows a diet that does not give digestive 
and physiological satisfaction. 

Native fats of animal origin contain a special sub- 
stance indispensable for growth. This is a fat- 
soluble vitamine and will be described with water- 
soluble vitamines under the discussion of these in- 
teresting bodies. 

The desirable fat content of the diet of an adult 
may be stated to be not below 40 grams per day, 
but many individuals will find 50 or 60 grams much 
more compatible with their tastes. For the gen- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM II9 

eral uses of fat in the preparation of food one fat 
is as good as another; vegetable fats are just as 
good as animal fats — oleomargarine, cottonseed 
oil, olive oil, corn oil, peanut oil just as good as 
butter, lard, tallow, or suet. The use of fats in 
the diet for the preparation of food is a matter of 
culinary art. For our entire population, daily in- 
gestion of 50 grams of fat could not fail to satisfy 
the most extreme tastes. In the case of the child, 
the vegetable fats cannot be compared to the ani- 
mal fats, especially to butter fat. Butter fat, in 
other words milk, contains a high concentration of 
the indispensable vitamine of growth, and for this 
reason in growing children a certain amount of the 
fat taken ought always to be milk fat. If the 
amount of milk that furnishes the balanced protein 
be present in the diet of the child, we may be sure 
that the essential amount of growth-producing sub- 
stance is also present. The claims of one reinforce 
the claims of the other and make it a public duty to 
secure for every child in the slums of our cities that 
amount of milk daily that is necessary to maintain 
the normal processes of growth and development. 
When the child is weaned it is transferred to cow's 
milk, which for a time takes over the entire sus- 
tenance of the child. As the child grows older and 
other foods are added, the relative amount of its 
food derived from the daily milk falls gradually. 



I20 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

With the poor in our city slums children frequently 
are denied milk after the fifth year; with the classes 
of better means, milk is continued in the diet of the 
child until adolescence. With a well-selected diet, 
such as is possible to people of means, it is less 
necessary to continue milk in the diet up to the 
time of adolescence; but with the people of poorer 
means, where a proper diet is rarely selected, it is 
very important to continue the use of milk in the 
diet of the child as long as possible. For this rea- 
son, the maintenance of an adequate milk supply for 
cities at as low a price as possible becomes a matter 
of much more than mere nutritional importance. 

CARBOHYDRATE 

Under the head of carbohydrate are included all 
of the starches of cereals, tubers and vegetables of 
all kinds and the sugars. These carbohydrates all 
have the same ultimate meaning in nutrition, since 
in the act of digestion and resorption they are all 
converted into one chemical state, glucose. Carbo- 
hydrate is not absolutely necessary in the diet. 
Eskimos and other flesh-eating tribes subsist for 
years on animal products. Nevertheless the body 
requires a certain amount of sugar, since sugar is 
an essential component of cells and the circulating 
fluids of the body contain a quite constant percent- 
age of sugar. When protein is utilized a certain 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 121 

amount of sugar is formed, and when an individual 
subsists entirely upon meat and fat the sugar de- 
rived from the meat is sufificient to supply the body 
with the sugar that is required. The need of car- 
bohydrate, in excess of the small amounts required 
by the cells, is as a fuel ; and carbohydrate occupies 
its predominant position in the diet because it is 
the cheapest fuel. As a fuel sugar is more quickly 
utilized than fat. When the body has available for 
use both sugar and fat, and physical work is under- 
taken, the body always burns sugar first ; it is only 
when the stores of sugar in the body have become 
depleted that the body burns fat to maintain work. 
We therefore speak of sugar as the primary fuel 
and fat as the secondary fuel, though they are 
entirely interchangeable ; and in practical experience 
it is largely immaterial whether one supports body 
work and body heat by combustion of sugar or fat; 
it is a question of taste and economics. One gram 
of carbohydrate yields to the body 4 calories of heat. 
The amount of carbohydrate required in the diet 
depends therefore upon climate and upon physical 
work. Given an adult resting man of 70 kilos 
body weight, the amount of protein required as 
previously stated may be set at 70 grams, equal to 
300 calories — a food calorie is that amount of 
food which will produce heat enough to raise one 
litre of water one degree centigrade. The amount 



122 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of fat required for the maintenance of normal nu- 
trition may be set at 40 grams, equal to 370 calories. 
The individual of 70 kilos, resting, fasting, in a 
room at tropical temperature, will produce let us 
say 1750 calories. Subtracting from this the sum 
of the heat values of protein and fat, will leave 
1080 calories to be covered by carbohydrate, if the 
cheapest fuel is to • be used, equal to 270 grams. 
One could maintain the body heat of this individual 
by the ingestion of a corresponding amount of fat 
(which would be 115 grams), or also by the in- 
gestion of 270 grams of protein. A sedentary life 
requires 100 to possibly 200 additional grams of 
carbohydrate ; active work, 400 or 500 ; hard work, 
up to or even exceeding 1000 grams. In actual 
practice, men who work hard do not cover all of 
their fuel needs with carbohydrate; they use both 
carbohydrate and fat in order to reduce the bulk 
of the diet. Sugar is a particularly available fuel 
for hard work; direct experiments indicate that 
sugar introduced into a working individual will be 
utilized in as short a time as fifteen minutes. The 
heat production of the new born babe is about 600 
calories per day, that of the sedentary man about 
2500, and the figure rises with physical work to as 
high as five thousand or more calories. The ra- 
tion of our army provides 4400 calories. The heat 
production of women is less than that of men. The 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 123 

per capita food need in terms of calories is between 
seventy-five and eighty per cent of the food need 
of the average adult male. 

Now in the use of food in actual life we do not 
find protein, fats and carbohydrate separately, but 
find them commingled in different proportions in 
different foods. Thus, the cereals contain on an 
average of 70 per cent of carbohydrate and 10 per 
cent of protein. Milk contains all three; meat con- 
tains protein and fat; and many of the legumes, 
such as the soya bean, contain large amounts of 
protein, fat and carbohydrate. The green vege- 
tables are poor in all, containing most carbohydrate 
and very little fat. With the diet so arranged as 
to contain the needed amounts of animal products 
in order to secure balanced protein and the fat- 
soluble vitamine, experience indicates that if the 
diet contains enough energy units to support the 
individual, it contains enough protein and fat to 
meet the needs of the body. One does not need 
to be concerned about the protein intake in a normal 
mixed diet, since it is practically impossible to se- 
cure the amount of carbohydrate necessary to 
maintain the work of the individual without at the 
same time securing the protein ; and the same state- 
ment holds for fat. It is only when individuals in 
poor circumstances, in attempting to reduce the 
cost of living to the lowest level, subsist upon very 



124 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

one-sided diets, consisting of few articles to the 
practical exclusion of animal products, that ab- 
normalities in nutrition occur. A diet of potatoes 
alone has maintained individuals in apparent health 
over a period of several years. One can live on 
mixed cereals alone so far as protein, fat and car- 
bohydrate are concerned. From the economic 
point of view it is important to calculate the com- 
ponents of a ration from the standpoint of protein, 
fat and carbohydrate; but from the nutritional 
point of view, this is less important in the normal 
mixed diet in a civilized community. 

MINERAL SALTS 

The body requires mineral salts for the skeleton 
and for the maintenance of the normal physical 
state of the body cells and circulating fluids. The 
chlorides, phosphates and carbonates of lime, 
sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron 
are the bodies most largely concerned. These 
mineral matters are obtained in the diet in cereals, 
fruits and vegetables. In a normal mixed diet it 
is rare to secure a deficiency in salts ; it is only when 
the diet is extremely one-sided or repressed that 
a deficiency in mineral matters appears. This 
deficiency in mineral intake is more important in 
childhood than in adult life. A safeguard here lies 
in the abundant use of milk, which contains all of 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I25 

the mineral matters needed for the body. A diet 
consisting of white patent flour alone would not 
contain the necessary mineral matters; a diet con- 
sisting of potato alone would contain the necessary 
mineral matters. The addition of fats to white 
patent flour would not furnish the necessary mineral 
matters. Much more mineral matter is contained 
in grain ofifal than in patent flour. Individuals who 
prefer bread made of patent flour must, therefore, 
secure their mineral salts from fruits and vegetables, 
and this is entirely practicable. If, however, it is 
not possible to secure fruits and vegetables, then 
the diet must contain flour made of the whole grain 
in order to obtain the necessary mineral matters. 

VITAMINES 

Under vitamines, we understand two kinds of 
substances whose presence in the body is essential 
to normal health and growth. These vitamines are 
designated in accordance with one of their pro- 
nounced properties, namely, that of solution, as 
water-soluble vitamine and fat-soluble vitamine. 

The water-soluble vitamine is present in cereals, 
fruits, vegetables, meats, and in milk. If food- 
stuffs are consumed in a natural state, the water- 
soluble vitamine is abundantly available. It is, 
however, destroyed by prolonged heating and there- 
fore in the preparation of foods some of the water- 



126 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

soluble vitamine may be destroyed. The cereals 
contain the water-soluble vitamine in the outer 
layers, and it is, therefore, not present in patent 
flour, but is present in whole wheat flour. The 
vitamine of the cereals is not destroyed by the 
amount of heat used in the ordinary act of baking. 
On the other hand, the vitamines in vegetables may 
be destroyed in the ordinary act of canning where 
the heating is severe. Therefore, an individual 
subsisting upon bread made of a patent flour and 
canned vegetables and canned meat would be apt 
to exhibit after a length of time nutritional dis- 
turbances related to the absence of water-soluble 
vitamine. In the Orient, a diet of polished rice 
and fish leads to the disease termed " beri-beri," 
which is cured by the administration of fruits, 
vegetables, or by the consumption of unpolished 
rice. A diet composed predominatingly of patent 
white flour and lard or other pork products is apt 
to lead to nutritional diseases, such as have been 
observed in Labrador; and it seems probable that 
pellagra is due largely to the absence of water- 
soluble vitamine. It is a common misconception 
that these vitamines reside only in the outer hull 
of grains and that, therefore, all individuals should 
use whole wheat flour. This is incorrect, for fruits 
and vegetables are, as already stated, rich in these 
vitamines. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 27 

The fat-soluble vitamine is not present in the 
cereals to any material extent. It is present in 
leaves and in many roots. If animals be fed 
wholly upon cereals they will exhibit after a space 
of time nutritional disturbances. If the diet con- 
tains leaves and roots, such disturbances will not 
appear. A balanced ration for domesticated ani- 
mals consists therefore of cereals and leaves or 
roots. Now when these leaves and roots are con- 
sumed by animals, the fat-soluble vitamine passes 
into the tissues of the animal and passes also into 
the milk. The fat-soluble vitamine is present in 
milk to a higher concentration than in any other 
foodstuff. It is this that gives to milk its pre- 
dominant influence over the process of growth, 
since absence of fat-soluble vitamine shows its most 
pronounced effect in cessation of growth. Since 
children cannot digest such leaves and roots, it is 
imperative that vitamine be offered to them in the 
form of milk. It is of importance to insist that 
the fat-soluble vitamine is not present in whole 
grains and is therefore not present in whole wheat 
bread. It is also important to know that fat- 
soluble vitamine is for us much more important 
than the water-soluble vitamine. The water-solu- 
ble vitamine is practically everywhere; but the fat- 
soluble vitamine is largely localized in a few food- 
stuffs, and these must be present in the diet in the 



128 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

proper amounts. It is especially important that 
the diet of the woman in gestation should contain 
an abundance of fat-soluble vitamine in the form 
of milk or leaf vegetables. 

WATER 

No discussion of the need of water in the body is 
necessary beyond the mere statement that water is 
required in the act of digestion; that a certain water 
concentration is essential to the life of the cells; 
that water must be provided for renal elimination; 
and that the need for water depends beyond this 
upon the necessary elimination of water in the 
maintenance of body heat through the respiratory 
and cutaneous systems. There are many fads 
connected with the drinking of water. There is a 
common notion that water taken with meals is in- 
jurious. If mastication of the food be carefully 
carried out and water be consumed between the 
swallowing of food, the consumption of a moderate 
amount of water is advantageous. The idea that 
water with meals is conducive to obesity is only 
true if the use of the water is conducive to the in- 
gestion of excessive amounts of food. 

The normal diet should contain an indigestible 
residue in order to furnish a normal bulk to the 
stools. This is not a statement of animal physi- 
ology; it is a statement of the physiology of the 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 29 

civilized individual. Experimental investigations 
in animals and X-ray observations on human beings 
indicate that the alimentary tract of the child 
normally reacts with an evacuation of the bowels 
following each ingestion of food. This is seen in 
the babe and would appear throughout normal life 
if it were not trained out of the individual in order 
to have his habits conform to the conventions of 
civilized existence. Investigations among savages 
in various sections of the world have indicated that 
savages evacuate the bowels after every act of eat- 
ing, and there are in civilized communities consid- 
erable numbers of individuals who have retained 
or re-acquired the normal muscular habits of the 
primitive alimentary tract. With most individuals, 
however, the muscular tone of the intestine loses 
its normal response and depends for its reaction to 
a certain extent upon the mass of the intestinal 
content. The mass of the stools consists of the 
secretions of the alimentary tract, the unresorbed 
foodstuff that was digestible but not resorbed, and 
the indigestible components of the foodstuffs. 
Fruits and vegetables leave a large residue. The 
residue of cereals is heavy if the whole grain is con- 
sumed. The residue of meats, dairy products, 
patent flours and vegetable oils is very small since 
their digestion is practically complete and they con- 
tain little indigestible residue. It is quite imma- 



130 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

terial from what the indigestible residue is derived, 
whether from fruits, vegetables or the hulls of 
grains. This is a question of individual taste and 
of the reaction of the individual alimentary tract. 

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DIET 

These factors described compose the physiology 
of digestion. They comprise the known facts of 
digestion in animals that hold for human beings 
so long as the human being can be compelled to act 
like an animal. They will hold strictly for savage 
tribes who have a physiology, but little psychology, 
of nutrition. As one ascends in the scale of civili- 
zation, the laws of the physiology of nutrition do 
not lose their validity, but the psychology of nu- 
trition assumes constantly greater importance until 
finally, with the average individual of our day and 
country, the psychology of the diet, from the stand- 
point of the individual and of the community, is as 
important as the physiology of nutrition. It is not 
sufficient that the diet contains the denominated 
protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamines, mineral mat- 
ter, etc. It must contain them in certain ways; 
it must be prepared according to certain stand- 
ards; it must be consumed under particular sur- 
roundings; it must be served in accordance with 
selected procedures. A thousand and one external 
influences determine whether or not a diet, correct 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I3I 

in itself from the standpoint of animal physiology, 
will be regarded as correct and proper by the con- 
sumer. The appearance of food, and its palata- 
bility, and the previous experience of the individual 
have a determining influence so profound that they 
may actually prevent the digestion and utilization 
of a particular foodstuff. It is thus true, not as a 
matter of notion but as a matter of fact, that a diet 
that would be entirely proper and comfortable for 
a Russian peasant would fail as nourishment for 
the highly specialized organism of a Russian artist. 
There is of course a great deal under cover of the 
term '^ psychology of nutrition " that is purely 
arbitrary idiosyncrasy, that will disappear under 
repression. There is, however, a great deal that 
is real and that bears directly not only upon the in- 
gestion of food and upon the sense of satiation but 
operates also to alter the normal processes of diges- 
tion. 

In a period of stress, such as at present confronts 
the American people, it is incumbent upon every 
family to attempt a separation of the true psy- 
chology of the diet from false psychology, idiosyn- 
crasy, and from the fads with which our ideas of 
diet have become infested. We have a maze of 
nonsense surrounding our ideas of food that must 
be removed if we are to face clearly and handle 
efficiently the food problem that confronts our 



132 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

people. So long as people believe that corn meal 
is heating, that barley cannot be eaten in summer, 
that the quality of meat is determined by the size 
of the animal, that the digestibility of eggs varies 
with the colour of the hens, etc., etc., that long will 
it be impossible for such individuals to reconstruct 
their diet to conform to the correct physiology and 
psychology of alimentation. It is necessary to 
retain those features of the psychology of alimen- 
tation that make for refinement in life and satis- 
faction in nutrition; but also equally necessary to 
discard wasteful idiosyncrasies, vulgar supersti- 
tions and pseudo-scientific fads. 

INFLUENCE OF TRADE 

Trade influences our diet either essentially as a 
result of trade conditions or through manipulation. 
Commercial trade practices influence to a large 
extent the consumption of foodstuffs in the United 
States. It is a truism among the manufacturers of 
foodstuffs that a properly conducted, adequately 
financed campaign in advertising will create a 
market for any new foodstuff, irrespective of any 
question of superiority from the nutritive point of 
view. The history of breakfast foods is an illumi- 
nating illustration. There is no nutritive basis for 
the establishment of any one or for its replacement 
by another. The factors that count most in ad- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 133 

vertising are method of preparation, saving of 
labour by the housewife, taste, attractiveness of the 
package, keeping quaHties, in other v^ords, second- 
ary considerations. The prices are high compared 
with that of the original cereal from which they 
were derived; for the price covers the advertising, 
the cost of the special package, the marketing, the 
bulky freight tonnage, and the overhead charges of 
the retailer who has to carry many brands that 
occupy much space upon his shelves. None of 
these fancy breakfast foods have any nutritive su- 
periority over the cereals out of which they are 
manufactured. They represent the desire of the 
American housewife to save work, to have some- 
thing new and to serve an infinite variety of cereals. 
Such an influence of trade is purely artificial and 
is based largely upon the restlessness of the con- 
sumer. There are, however, other trade influences 
of an entirely different nature. The trade pushes 
certain commodities because handling of them is 
profitable; conditions of transportation, portability, 
keeping qualities, evenness of production, ability to 
purchase by contract, financial responsibility of the 
producer, standardized quality of the wares, etc., 
all are involved. The grocer takes up each new 
breakfast food as an ephemeral trade, knowing that 
it will soon be supplanted. He takes up a certain 
line of bacon knowing that it will be always the 



134 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

same; the firm manufacturing the article is re- 
sponsible, the product is guaranteed, and it repre- 
sents a staple in the mind of the consumer. In this 
sense, that which is staple in trade becomes a staple 
to the consumer. The flour of a certain section 
keeps better than the flour of another section; the 
sweet corn of a certain area is tenderer than that 
of another region. A large number of such trade 
factors will at once suggest themselves to the reader. 
They are essentially related to conditions in the 
supply and themselves really represent adaptations 
of the trade to conditions in the supply. 

Now, in times of stress, trade conditions cannot 
be maintained, and particularly under conditions of 
war, with disorganization of labour and transporta- 
tion, it becomes increasingly difficult for the trade 
to maintain its standards. This results in disor- 
ganization of trade values, depreciation of the worth 
of markets, and sophistication of foodstuffs, adul- 
teration, and lowering of values. The standard 
article costs relatively and absolutely more to pro- 
duce than the ordinary article, and with the dif- 
ferential between the two becoming increased, there 
is motive for sophistication and the consumer is 
tempted to leave the standard staple. A strict 
enforcement of pure food laws under these circum- 
stances, though very much more difficult than in 
peace time, becomes the absolute duty of the gov- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 135 

ernment. Prior to the declaration of war against 
Germany by Italy, Italian exporters flooded Ger- 
many with sophisticated foodstuffs that were 
eagerly seized in the condition of stress in Ger- 
many because of the attractiveness in price dis- 
tinction. It is difficult to enforce pure food laws 
under these circumstances because many of our 
pure food laws represent not factors of nutrition, 
but rather factors of trade. It is so easy for a 
manufacturer to allow his product to vary from 
his statement of contents if it is difficult in the 
markets to secure the substances necessary to main- 
tain in the content the statement of contents. 

In the United States at present, it is practically 
impossible to secure for purposes of manufacture 
the assortment of imported wares from the Orient, 
peppers, spices, etc., that were available in peace 
time, and it becomes very difficult for the manu- 
facturer of a trade-mark brand to maintain the 
content under which his market was originally de- 
veloped. Under conditions of stress it becomes 
much more difficult to grade grains and the manu- 
facturers of flour find it increasingly difficult to 
select grains and blend them in order to produce 
the flour to which their trade has become accus- 
tomed. When cattle are rushed to market in poor 
condition and pigs at a very low weight, it is diffi- 
cult for the packing houses to maintain the standard 



136 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of their products. Throughout the entire trade, 
the temptation to use fillers that are innocuous, but 
devoid of nutrient value, is difficult to resist. 
Freedom of action in the trade is much restricted 
under conditions of war, and such restriction in 
freedom of action often so operates to modify the 
influence of trade as to render it pernicious. On 
the other hand, the efficiency of governmental ma- 
chinery in the maintenance of food laws is at the 
same time greatly reduced. When things are 
scarce and prices are high, even if speculation be 
eliminated, the very attitude of the consumer tempts 
to a modification of the normal factors of trade, and 
these modifications are usually in the direction of 
inefficiency in terms of final analysis in food units. 
It is the business of the government, when the avail- 
able foodstuffs must be utilized to a more complete 
extent, to itself control this utilization in place of 
leaving it to the decisions of the interested traders. 
It is not merely the function of the government in 
war time to increase production, to eliminate specu- 
lation, to govern distribution, to make equitable 
division of foodstuffs to the consumer, to teach the 
consumer proper utilization of foodstuffs and the 
elimination of all waste; it is also the duty of the 
government to so control relations of trade that 
the diet of the consumer is not unduly modified and 
to his detriment. Any modification in the factors 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 137 

of trade in war time will tend in the direction of 
reduction of efficiency in nutrition, never in the 
direction of improvement. 

The question of trade brands represents one of 
the peculiar features of the situation that merits a 
moment's discussion. If the established high-grade 
trade brands are maintained in war time this will 
usually be done at the expense of the quality of the 
remaining foodstuffs. The people of means will 
purchase the standard maintained brands, leaving 
to the poor the depreciated grades of foodstuffs. 
There is no reduction in price, however, that cor- 
responds to the depreciation of foodstuffs to the 
poor classes. The prices of the standard high- 
grade brands are relatively the cheapest under such 
circumstances and yet they are beyond the purchas- 
ing power of the poorer classes. This leads to class 
resentment and to inefficiency in the nutrition of a 
people; and this has led the European governments 
practically to abolish such brands during the course 
of the war. There is, for example, in Germany, 
England and France today, only a war flour; the 
high-grade brands of the mills of those countries 
have been abolished for the period of the war. 
Germany used to produce particular varieties of 
foods that were widely exported — hams from 
Westphalia, sausages from Braunschweig, cakes 
from Wiirttemberg, chocolates from Mannheim, 



138 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

etc., etc. These have all been abolished ; cakes have 
a uniform composition, hams and sausages are pre- 
pared in a uniform manner. The products of 
highest quality no longer exist, but the general 
average is above that v^hich v^ould have existed in 
the lowest grades had the products of highest grades 
been maintained. 

To abolish the high-grade trade brands means 
of course an extremely radical step, one not to be 
taken without mature consideration, since it repre- 
sents practically a revolution in the practices of the 
trades. In countries actively at war under stress 
of abnormal conditions this becomes absolutely nec- 
essary. It has not yet been necessary in the United 
States to abolish the high-grade brands as has been 
done abroad; but if here, as abroad, the quality of 
the ordinary goods becomes seriously depreciated, 
we may expect strong public clamour for similar 
action to be carried through here, because under 
such conditions the maintenance of a high-grade 
trade brand means not merely a commercial privi- 
lege to the particular producer; it means a direct 
favouritism to people of purchasing power, and 
this leads to class discrimination, bitterness of 
feeling and reduction in morale. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SOCIOLOGY OF NUTRITION 

In the previous chapter we discussed the physiol- 
ogy of nutrition, the nutrition of the individual from 
birth throughout life under the varying exigencies 
of a normal existence in the economic and social 
sense. Under sociology of nutrition we understand 
the nutrition of a people regarded as a unit. While 
in the superficial sense one might regard the nutri- 
tion of a people as a mere multiple of the nutrition 
of an individual, this is far from the truth. Under 
the normal conditions of life the problems in the 
sociology of nutrition are largely concerned with 
the alimentation of the poorest classes. The prob- 
lem of feeding and housing the masses who, through 
limitation in capacity occupy necessarily the lowest 
station in the scale of wage, has become with each 
decade a more engrossing and imperative problem 
of society. Investigations have been carried out in 
numbers by governmental agencies. Efforts for the 
amelioration of these conditions have in this coun- 
try been largely carried out through eleemosynary 
organizations and in particular instances through 

139 



140 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the industrial corporations which, far-sighted in ad- 
vance of their time, have come to the reaHzation 
that industrial efficiency is incompatible with in- 
efficiency in alimentation of the labourers. But no- 
where except in Germany has the state entered com- 
prehensively into the work of amelioration of the 
conditions of life indicated in a comprehensive defi- 
nition of the sociology of nutrition. Whatever one 
may think of the military caste and class of Ger- 
many, the fact remains that before the war Germany 
was practically the only nation in the civilized world 
where governmental agencies existed designed to 
prevent sub-nutrition not only in classes but in in- 
dividuals. 

The problems of the sociology of nutrition are 
largely zonal. There are zones of large earnings 
as against zones of minimal earnings. There are 
zones of large production of foodstuffs and zones 
of low production of foodstuffs. Sub-nutrition is 
as frequent in certain agricultural areas as it is in 
cities. For the most part, viewing the problem of 
the sociology of nutrition from the standpoint of the 
historic doctrines of political economy, it is appar- 
ent that sub-nutrition in classes results partly from 
the cruel and unyielding application of the law of 
supply and demand and partly from abrogation of 
the operation of this law through manipulations in 
the processes of distribution, involving cornering of 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I4I 

the market, arbitrary deflection of the laws of trade, 
speculation and extortion. It is most perplexing to 
determine in a particular instance whether the in- 
ability of the individual to cover his nutritional 
needs with the money at his disposal depends upon 
the natural disparity of his buying power with con- 
ditions in the market of commodities; or whether 
the limitation in his buying power is due to his in- 
ability to reach the market of commodities, closed 
to him by an artificial interference with the law of 
supply and demand. Quantitatively viewed, it is 
probably a fair statement to say that at all times five 
per cent of the people of this country are on the 
verge of sub-nutrition and that in times of industrial 
stress this proportion may rise much higher. The 
phenomenon is zonal, whether the result of the ap- 
plication of the law of supply and demand or the 
result of artificial abrogation of this law. The 
acute stringency in foodstuffs that developed in 
New York City during the fall of 191 6 is fresh in 
the minds of readers. 

Now under conditions of war time, new factors 
intervene that operate in two directions. They op- 
erate at first in the direction of intensification of 
the application of tlie law of supply and demand. 
They also operate to place greater powers in the 
hands of business interests to abrogate the law of 
supply and demand. When, however, the opera- 



142 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

tions of war become very intensive and extensive, 
the law of supply and demand collapses. At first 
thought, one might be inclined to doubt the truth of 
this statement. Even in Germany, the objector 
could urge, so long as a rich man, if he has the $75, 
can buy a goose for that figure, surely the law of 
supply and demand still holds. The illustration is 
trivial and based upon a superficial consideration. 
When the people of the northwest have the money 
to buy coal and the coal mines have the coal at the 
pit and a delivery is made impossible through the 
break-down of transportation, it is idle to say that 
the law of supply and demand still holds. The chief 
factor in the break-down of the law of supply and 
demand is the state of transportation. Through 
specialization of industry throughout the world, 
based upon fluidity in transportation, production in 
agriculture and manufacture have become more and 
more specialized, more and more zonal. The mo- 
ment transportation fails to effect an obliteration of 
these zones, the law of supply and demand ceases to 
be operative. Wheat lies in hundreds of million 
bushels in Australia and India, sugar in the hun- 
dred thousand tones in Java. Yet no insistence in 
the call of the purchasing power of the rest of the 
world suffices to bring them out. Starvation exists in 
Petrograd and want along the Russian front, while 
grain lies piled up a few hundred miles to the rear. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 43 

One of the chief factors in manufacture is power 
and this power is usually derived from coal. The 
entire manufacturing scheme of the world today 
is upset through the break-down of the transporta- 
tion of fuel ; and this disorganization extends to the 
producer of the raw materials upon which manufac- 
ture is founded. There are other factors operative 
in addition to the breakdown of transportation, but 
this is the most potent in disastrous results. Less 
food is produced in the world, and more is con- 
sumed, since war is hard work. But whatever fac- 
tors enter, these could be compensated for if trans- 
portation, using the term in the large sense, could 
be held to the normal plane of efficiency. Break- 
down of transportation may be relative or absolute ; 
relative, when shipment of the necessaries is neg- 
lected on account of preoccupation with military 
tonnage (as in America), absolute when the total 
carrying power of the transportation systems has 
fallen below normal (present condition in Ger- 
many) . 

The break-down of transportation affects the so- 
ciology of nutrition in that it renders the zones 
of production more distant than in peace time and 
increases the differential between price to the pro- 
ducer and cost to the consumer. It also involves 
the production of foodstuffs because it disturbs the 
natural flow of machinery, fertilizer, and disar- 



144 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

ranges the normal regional fluctuations of labor. 
While, therefore, in the specific and superficial sense 
It may still be true that the law of supply and de- 
mand holds, in the sense that if a packing house has 
a million pounds of lard it goes to the highest bid- 
der, in the broad sense the law of supply and de- 
mand does not today hold in the United States and 
all considerations directed to the maintenance of the 
normal sociology of nutrition must be based upon 
recognition of this fact. 

In the nutrition of a nation, as in the nutrition of 
an individual, we must distinguish two spheres, if 
the term may be so employed, namely, the sphere of 
necessity and the sphere of adaptation. In the diet 
of an individual certain amounts of balanced pro- 
tein, fat, carbohydrate, water-soluble vitamine, fat- 
soluble vitamine, and mineral salts are essential. 
Beyond this point, the individual may adapt his diet 
to the circumstances of his surroundings. In the 
nutrition of a nation, the minimal amounts of pro- 
tein, fat, corbohydrate, vitamines, and salts qualified 
to maintain the total population in a condition of 
normal health and strength are included in the sphere 
of necessities. The zone of adaptation includes 
everything outside of these. Viewed in the quan- 
titative sense, 20 to 25 per cent of the foodstuffs of 
a nation lies in the sphere of necessities ; the remain- 
der lies in the sphere of adaptation. In order to 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 145 

maintain the efficiency of the nutrition of a people, 
the food control of a nation at war must guarantee 
to the entire people, irrespective of other conditions, 
the minimal amounts of the named constituents of a 
normal diet that are essential to nutrition. There 
can be no zone of over-feeding in these essentials in 
one part of the country and a zone of under-feeding 
in another. There must be an even average applica- 
tion; otherwise, disaster lies ahead. Once this is 
attained, the remainder of the foodstuffs necessary 
for nutrition and the maintenance of work may be 
adapted in the zonal sense by substitution to the con- 
ditions of production in the particular area. 

Now, in the order of their importance, what are 
the elements in production that must be maintained 
and guaranteed in equitable distribution in order that 
the nutrition of a people shall be maintained under 
the stress of conditions of war? 

MILK 

First and most important is the milk supply. 
Milk, including of course butter and cheese, sup- 
plies the essential growth vitamine for children, bal- 
anced protein for children and adults, and an ade- 
quate supply of mineral matter for children. Milk 
has in addition invaluable properties in the cuisine 
of an Anglo-Saxon people. A certain amount of 
milk is required in the preparation of our food and 



146 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

if absent this would so disorganize the condition 
of our food and alter its qualities from the psycho- 
logical point of view as to exert a disastrous influ- 
ence upon national alimentation. Viewing the mat- 
ter by and large and erring always on the side of 
safety, it may be said that the milk consumption of 
the United States should not fall below one pint 
of milk per capita per day, or approximately 45 gal- 
lons per capita per year. The milk production of 
the country has steadily fallen from 95 gallons per 
capita per year to probably 70 gallons today. A 
range of from 45 and 70 gallons would seem to be 
a wide leeway, but as a matter of fact it is much less 
wide than the figures would indicate. We must 
subtract from the 70 gallons the milk corresponding 
to the butter and condensed milk that are exported, 
a not inconsiderable fraction at the present time. 
The consumption of milk in country districts is in- 
evitably higher than in cities. The greater the pro- 
duction of milk over 45 gallons per capita, the 
greater the chance that each individual in the 
cities will receive that amount per year; the nar- 
rower the margin, the more doubtful the equita- 
bility of distribution. There is good evidence to in- 
dicate that during the past six months large groups 
of population in the United States have not received 
45 gallons per capita per year and this not as an ex- 
pression of mere poverty. The price of feed has 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I47 

been very high. There has been a decHne in the 
relative effort of dairying as a whole, a tendency to 
get out of the dairying business, throughout the 
country, because it has not been possible to increase 
the sale price of milk in proportion to the cost price 
of feed. 

The remedy lies primarily in increased milk pro- 
duction. Necessary to this end are increase in the 
supply of feed, reduction in the price of feed, alle- 
viation of the stringency of labour on the farm, or- 
ganization and control of the distribution of milk, 
reduction of general waste, elimination of special 
waste of skimmed milk attending the manufacture 
of butter and cheese, the placing of skimmed milk 
on sale in the cities, and reduction in the cost of de- 
livery. The whole practice of distribution and 
retail sale of milk needs a thorough overhaul- 
ing. We ought to aim to increase as rapidly 
as possible the number of milch cows from 
the present 22,000,000 to 26,000,000, and this 
increase must of course be with productive strains 
instead of nondescript stock. It must be clearly 
realized that the problems involving milch cat- 
tle and beef cattle are distinct and separable. 
One cannot turn beef strains into the dairy or dairy 
strains into the feeding stalls with other than in- 
different results. To a large extent therefore the 
problem of the production of milk is just as distinct 



148 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

from the problem of the production of beef as it is 
from the problem of the production of mutton. 

Milk is always produced in an intensive manner 
in zones that correspond to congestion in population. 
Now, unfortunately, the zones of production of con- 
centrated feeding-stuffs and the zones of production 
of milk need not coincide. The principal concen- 
trates in the feeding of milch cows are grain offal, 
linseed meal, oil cake, peanut meal, and various leg- 
umes, including soya beans, cowpeas and velvet 
beans. The grain offal is produced in the areas of 
milling. The dairy districts of Wisconsin, Illinois, 
Minnesota and Iowa lie contiguous to the great mill- 
ing centres and are thus able to obtain mill feed at 
reasonable rates, but the great dairy areas of the 
East lie distant from the milling centres. Linseed 
meal is produced largely in the northwest, again 
adjacent to the areas of milk production; but oil 
cake, peanut meal, and the various legumes are 
produced in the South where dairying is but slightly 
developed. The dairying areas of the West occupy 
a much more favourable position than the dairying 
areas of the eastern states and yet these serve an 
intensely congested population. 

An intensive development in dairying in the in- 
direct sense has been evolved in Europe but has re- 
ceived little attention in this country. This is the 
combining of the processes of making butter and 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I49 

margarine. In this country butter is made from 
cream secured by the centrifugation of milk and the 
skimmed milk is then either fed to swine or thrown 
away — thrown away, unfortunately, to a very con- 
siderable extent. In Europe, this skimmed milk is 
used for the further manufacture of margarine. 
Vegetable and animal fats in proper proportion, 
largely vegetable fats, are mixed with the skimmed 
milk and churned out just as butter would be, and 
this process may be repeated. In this way a very 
good product is obtained which has flavours derived 
from the milk. Within recent years in Denmark it 
has been the practice to export nearly all of the 
butter and to consume in Denmark margarine made 
by the churning of imported fats. Margarine is 
commonly called a butter substitute. It is, however, 
not a butter substitute but a supplementary table fat. 
Butter has a unique position in the diet, par- 
ticularly for children, and there is no substitute for 
butter from this point of view. In the per capita 
ration of a half pint of milk per day is included the 
butter fraction that is deemed essential for the 
health of our people. 

Beyond this amount of milk, however, fat is 
needed in the kitchen and on the table in the same 
way that butter is consumed. This fat must have 
some of the physical characteristics of butter and 
these physical characteristics can be given to it if 



150 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

manufactured into margarine in accordance with 
modern methods. It is necessary in the United States 
to increase the consumption of vegetable oils. It is 
impossible to increase the consumption of vegetable 
oils as such ; they must be passed through some sort 
of a fabrication in order to give them physical quali- 
ties that are in themselves desirable. This can be 
accomplished in one of two ways, either by hydro- 
genation or by the manufacture of margarine. Hy- 
drogenation of a fluid fat results in a solid product. 
It is a chemical procedure, has no result upon the 
digestibility or food value of the product and rep- 
resents an advance in the utilization of fluid fats. 
An ounce of water- free butter, hydrogenated fat, and 
margarine are equally valuable from the standpoint 
of digestibility, utilization and energy content. There 
is not enough butter to go around and if good sub- 
stitutes are not supplied, the consumption of fat falls. 
People will use hydrogenated fats and margarine 
where they refuse to use olive oil, cottonseed oil, 
palm oil, peanut oil or corn oil, simply because the 
use of fluid or semi-fluid oils lies outside of the 
habits and customs of an Anglo-Saxon people. 
There is no such problem in Italy or France because 
the people understand the use of olive and other oils ; 
but the problem does arise with every northern peo- 
ple and there are but two solutions ; either the people 
must be taught to use fluid vegetable oils as the peo- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM ISI 

pies of the South employ them, or these fluid vege- 
table oils must be converted into such a state as meets 
the customs and habits of the people. The hydro- 
genated fats are practically limited to the kitchen ; the 
place of margarine on the other hand is at the table. 
This is not a question of price, it is not a question of 
trade competition; it is a question of increasing the 
available fat food of our people. It can only be 
done by increasing the production of butter or by the 
manufacture of margarines that meet the tastes of 
an Anglo-Saxon people. Viewed properly, marga- 
rine, hydrogenated fats and butter are not competi- 
tive ; they are supplementary ; and the very viewpoint 
in food control that insists most strongly upon in- 
crease in the production of dairy products must at the 
same time urge the manufacture of margarine and 
commend its use. The dairyman and creamery 
should manufacture margarine just as they manufac- 
ture butter, butter being the product of the primary 
churning, margarine the product of the later churn- 
ing. 

A survey of the development of the utilization of 
the nation's milk supply over the past three decades 
illustrates that here as elsewhere efficiency in the 
utilization of milk from the nutritional point of view 
has been reduced owing to the increased demand for 
butter. The percentage of our total milk production 
that is devoted to the manufacture of butter has 



152 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

gradually risen to approximately 60 per cent. Two 
decades ago the rural communities, including in this 
term the small towns, consumed a much larger 
amount of milk per capita than now. With the in- 
troduction of the separator and the perfection of 
dairy methods, it became profitable for the farmer to 
dispose of his milk in terms of butter fat with only 
partial utilization of the skimmed milk and this al- 
most entirely by domesticated animals. There is in 
this country practically no such thing as the manu- 
facture of skimmed-milk cheese. Viewing the pro- 
duction of milk as a whole, the centrifuge has led to 
reduction in the consumption of milk as human food 
and increase in the consumption as butter. The 
same thing is true in Europe and the introduction 
of the separator into the highland districts of Ba- 
varia has produced such a transformation in the diet 
of the people as to constitute a sociological problem. 
Viewed from the standpoint of utilization it is 
much more efficient if milk can not be consumed as 
milk, to consume it in the state of cheese than 
in the state of butter, since the cheese contains 
all of the fat and the protein in addition. This 
fact is the basis for the recommendation of the Brit- 
ish food committee that the production of butter be 
reduced and the production of cheese increased. On 
the continent, skimmed milk is not wasted. Large 
amounts of skimmed milk are consumed directly. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 53 

and a great deal is used in the manufacture of 
skimmed milk cheese; the balance is used as a con- 
centrate in the feeding of swine. Dried skimmed 
milk represents a large future possibility of protein 
nourishment. Used in the kitchen in proper propor- 
tions, dried skimmed milk and vegetable oil repre- 
sent a substitute for full milk and eggs in the prepa- 
ration of foods, being for practical purposes inferior 
to eggs only in the absence of colour. 

BREAD 

The second indispensable part of a national diet 
is bread. Bread constitutes everywhere, in the quan- 
titative sense, the keystone of a nation's ration, as 
illustrated in the following table : 





Bread 


Protein 


Calories 


Other 




grain 


per cent 


per cent 


cereals 


Country 


as Hour 


of total 


of total 


in grams 




in grams 


in diet 


in diet 


in diet 




per day 








United States 


26s 


29 


31 


78 


Great Britain 


285 


29 


Z2 


48 


England 


310 


32 


36 


32 


Austria-Hungary 310 


40 


45 


75 


Germany 


310 


34 


40 


14 


Italy 


340 


43 


40 


98 


France 


410 


45 


53 


40 



The indispensability of bread in the ration is due 
less to its intrinsic qualities than to external proper- 
ties. The proteins of cereals are not balanced pro- 



154 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

teins. Grains contain very little fat-soluble vitamine 
and in a mixed diet the presence of the water-soluble 
vitamines of cereals is a negligible factor. The ex- 
ternal properties upon which the indispensability of 
bread in a ration rests lie in the physical qualities of 
the glutens and allied proteins that permit of bread 
being made in the form of a loaf that can be pre- 
pared in large lots of a uniform quality and appear- 
ance, with keeping qualities enabling the storing of 
supplies. All peoples consume cereals cooked and 
not baked in the form of bread, some even predom- 
inatingly as in the case of the rice of the Orient. 
Since the desirability of bread is based upon exter- 
nal qualities, wheat ranks the highest among the 
cereals, rye and barley next in the order named, and 
oats and maize last, in proportion to the quality of 
bread that may be produced from flours of these 
cereals. Wheat flour produces the whitest bread of 
the lightest and best texture, uniform in quality, al- 
though it does not keep as well as rye bread. In the 
earlier periods of the development of European na- 
tions barley and rye were the standard breads ; barley 
was first replaced by rye and rye has been later more 
or less replaced by wheat. In proportion as a con- 
tinental nation has risen in purchasing power, it has 
supplanted the use of rye bread by wheat bread and 
when a period of stringency arises, it reverses the 
process and returns to rye bread. This is due to the 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 155 

fact that the unit of production of rye per area and 
per man labour is for most sections of the world 
larger than for wheat, the conditions of the growth 
of the grain being more adaptable, although there 
are many local exceptions to this rule. 

Nutritionally the cereals in a mixed diet are ap- 
proximately equivalent. Corn and oats are some- 
what richer in fats, and oats and wheat are some- 
what richer in protein. Rice is the poorest in pro- 
tein. All of the cereals are poor in fat-soluble 
vitamine ; all are rich in water-soluble vitamine and 
mineral matters. In a mixed diet, therefore, these 
various cereals can be used to replace each other in 
any proportion so far as nutritional units are con- 
cerned. 

The amount of the diet covered by the use of 
cereals will determine the state in which the cereal 
ought to be employed in the diet. In the proportions 
given in the table, if the diet contains the normal 
amounts of dairy products, fruit and vegetables, it is 
immaterial how the grains be consumed. The finest, 
whitest patent flour represents about a 56 per cent 
extraction of standard wheat; that is, a 60-pound 
bushel of first-grade wheat will yield about 34 
pounds of the best grade of patent flour. There are . 
several grades of patent flour and so-called straight 
flours included in the production of the large mills ; 
and a fair average for the percentage of flour ex- 



156 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

tracted from the unit of wheat in this country is 
about 72 per cent, with a water content of about 13 
per cent. The remainder of the grain, representing 
in to to 28 per cent of the weight of the wheat, is 
termed grain offal and includes a number of frac- 
tions known in the trade as '' red dog," " shorts," 
'' middlings," and '' bran." These include the outer 
layers of the kernel and the germ. 

The grain offal contains a higher percentage of 
both protein and fat than does the fine patent flour 
and also a larger percentage of mineral matter. The 
mineral matters and the water-soluble vitamine that 
are present in the outer layers are of importance in 
the diet, but cereals are not the sole source of water- 
soluble vitamine and mineral matter. These can be 
obtained also in fruits and vegetables; and to the 
American subsisting upon a mixed diet it is possible 
to cover the needs of the body for mineral mat- 
ter, water-soluble vitamine and roughage, either 
by employing the outer layers of the grain in the 
form of so-called whole wheat flour, or by the free 
consumption of fruits and vegetables. One of these 
two must be included in the diet ; but it is immaterial 
which of the two is employed. Now, if the total 
cereal fraction of a diet runs toward the lowest fig- 
ures given, in other words, toward one-third of the 
total food value of the diet, the use of the whole 
grains is of little importance. If, on the other hand, 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 157 

a group of men attempts to live largely upon 
flour, with the addition for example of pork prod- 
ucts, it would be imperative to use whole wheat flour 
rather than patent flour. In the ordinary use of 
rice in the American home, it is immaterial whether 
one employs polished rice or whole rice; but in the 
use of rice in the Orient it is imperative to employ 
whole rice for at least a fraction of the diet. Nutri- 
tional diseases which appeared in one of the armies 
of the present war, due to limitation of the diet to 
white crackers and canned meats, were promptly 
cured by the administration of water-soluble vita- 
mine in the shape of yeast. The belief, however, 
that the health of a people as a whole depends upon 
the general use of whole-wheat bread as against 
white bread is based upon a misconception of the 
actual relations of the vitamines and salts in a 
mixed diet. 

The diet of our people is built around bread and 
milk. It is therefore essential at this time that the 
normal ration of bread should be maintained in order 
to permit the widest adaptation around these central 
factors. It is also psychologically necessary to main- 
tain the quality and physical properties of the bread. 
When grain becomes scarce one has the choice be- 
tween maintaining the quantity and altering the qual- 
ity, or maintaining the quality and reducing the 
quantity. In general, the practice has been to main- 



158 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

tain the quantity and lower the quality, though there 
are indications that this is very easily overdone. 
The maintenance of quantity may be accomplished 
in one of two ways — by a higher extraction of the 
grain and by the use of mixed flours. In the Euro- 
pean countries at war, the milling of wheat and rye 
has been advanced from the customary extraction to 
about 81 per cent. This 81 per cent in England in- 
cludes as much as 17 per cent of water ; in Germany, 
not over 14 per cent; so that the actual extraction is 
highest in Germany. The reason for setting the fig- 
ure 81 is the fact, determined by experiment, that, 
using protein as the criterion, an 81 per cent extrac- 
tion represents the maximum of utilization in the 
process of digestion ; and since the grain offal is of 
great value in feeding cattle, there is no gain in using 
a flour of higher extraction. The use of such flour 
assures the maintenance of the quantity of the loaf 
with a reduction in the grain of approximately one- 
sixth. The normal French ration of bread was in 
the neighbourhod of a pound and a quarter per day. 
The present war ration is a pound and an eighth, but 
the quality of the bread is lower. There is a wide^ 
spread agitation in France to secure an optional reg^ 
ulation, permitting a choice between 500 grams of 
bread prepared from an 85 per cent flour and 400 
grams of bread prepared from a ^2 per cent flour. 
There has also been much complaint in Germany 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 159 

against the coarse bread, and government regulation 
provides that in the case of invalids it is permissible 
to use a bread prepared from flour of lower extrac- 
tion. 

The use of mixed flours presents points of advan- 
tage over a higher extraction of the cereals in the 
milling. Standard flour may be mixed with 15 to 25 
per cent of flours of rye, barley, oats, rice, or corn, 
with the maintenance of the physical properties of 
the bread, with little change in taste, and with the 
production of bread which to a great many people is 
preferable to a straight wheat bread of the graham 
type. The best' way of looking at the matter in a 
democratic country is to accord freedom. Our gov- 
ernment has not altered the milling of the wheat in 
the manufacture of flour. But we are short of 
wheat. We urge the use of whole wheat flour and 
the use of mixed flours, leaving it to the discretion, 
taste, and patriotism of the individual to employ 
standard flour, whole wheat flour or mixed flour in 
such proportions as may be elected. With such 
stringency in the supply of cereals as is now preva- 
lent in Europe, this is not possible. The choice is 
there limited to whole wheat flour or mixed flour 
and where the stringency becomes marked, as in the 
case of Germany, there is no choice whatsoever; the 
state prescribes a flour composed of whole wheat 
flour plus the admixture of flours of other cereals. 



l6o THE FOOD PROBLEM 

One of the standard breads of Germany during 
the past six months was composed of 55 parts of 
wheat flour and 45 parts of rye and barley flour. 
If the barley be milled to a low extraction, as 60 per 
cent, the flour produced is one of the best for ad- 
mixture with wheat flour, having the least influence 
upon the final product, with slight alteration in taste ; 
but if barley be milled to 75 or 80 per cent, it usu- 
ally adds to the bread a slightly bitterish taste. The 
addition of rice flour tends to contribute a pastry- 
like quality. The addition of rye darkens but does 
not otherwise modify the loaf or taste to a material 
extent. The addition of corn tends to make the 
bread granular; it dries more easily and does not 
keep so well. The addition of potato, unless very 
carefully done, tends to make the bread soggy, a 
hard crust with an area of underbaking in the cen- 
tre. Potato starch or potato flour has always been 
used on the continent in the preparation of the finest 
pastries and a certain amount, up to possibly 10 per 
cent, can be used with careful methods in the bak- 
ing of bread without leading to untoward results; 
but the potato bread of Germany of a year ago was 
an abomination in the eyes of the baker and con- 
sumer alike, since it contained so much potato that 
it was not possible to produce an article that the 
baker or consumer regarded as an acceptable bread. 

The decision as to which alteration in bread 



THE FOOD PROBLEM l6l 

should be adopted rests to a large extent upon the 
habits of the people. If the people are predomi- 
nantly home bakers, then the freest choice should be 
permitted. If the people, on the contrary, are sup- 
plied by outside bakers, then early regulation is 
preferable since it will lead to the establishment of 
a definite technique and the production of a stand- 
ard loaf. On the continent of Europe there is very 
little domestic baking, practically all bread is pur- 
chased. In this country about 55 per cent of our 
people consume home-made bread ; and under these 
circumstances a moderate latitude ought to be per- 
mitted, in the event of regulation for the control of 
bread becoming imperative. 

Another important factor in connection with the 
type of flour employed depends upon the habits of 
the people in the purchase of flour. If a people con- 
sume flour soon after its production, it is possible 
to place upon the market a flour of high extraction, 
whereas this is not the case if the flour is held in 
the household for a longer period of time. The 
white flours keep well ; the whole grain flours keep 
badly. The eggs of insects are often deposited in 
the grains and, in addition, bacteria are always pres- 
ent in the germ. It is this tendency to decomposi- 
tion that accounts in part for the high price of whole 
grain flour. In a small country like England and 
especially in a country where bread is bought largely 



1 62 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

from the baker, the time that elapses between the 
day of milling and of production of bread is only 
a few weeks. In this country flour must keep four, 
five, or six months if it is to give satisfaction, since a 
great deal of bread is made in the home from flour 
milled long previously. A flour that would be satis- 
factory in keeping qualities in Germany would be un- 
satisfactory in the United States; and there is no 
way of compelling people to buy flour in small 
amounts and use it quickly, in other words, to regard 
it as a perishable when according to all domestic ex- 
perience flour has always been regarded as a non- 
perishable. It has been entirely practicable for the 
British to produce an 8i per cent flour in England; 
but it did not prove practicable to buy an 8i per 
cent flour in the United States and ship it to Eng- 
land under present conditions of tonnage, because 
there were heavy losses from decomposition. From 
this point of view, as an obligatory measure the use 
of mixed flours would be more advantageous in 
this country than the use of whole grain flour. 

War-time experience has indicated that the cereal 
consumption of a people need not be given entirely 
in the form of bread. A certain bread ration must 
be determined, otherwise the diet does not seem 
natural and the restriction will provoke resentment ; 
but beyond a certain point cereals may be substituted 
for bread. In our northern states the flour con- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 1 63 

sumed is somewhere in the neighbourhood of eleven 
to twelve ounces per capita per day and the con- 
sumption of other cereals somewhere in the neigh- 
bourhood of two ounces, including the breakfast 
foods. In our southern states, the consumption of 
flour is six or seven ounces and the consumption of 
other cereals six or seven ounces. Indeed, in many 
sections of the south, not over one-third of the grain 
consumption is in the state of bread, the balance 
being in the state of rice and corn. 

Even with the nations that cling most desperately 
to the use of bread in the diet, a certain amount of 
bread may be replaced by other cereals. In Eng- 
land, they have encouraged the use of oat meal, corn 
meal and rice, and reduced the bread ration, es- 
pecially in the middle and upper classes. In Italy, 
it has been possible to increase the use of rice and 
corn to the point of reducing bread consumption to 
one-third of the intake. Large classes in Italy are 
content to consume their cereals in the form of 
pastes, corn and rice, with only the occasional use 
of bread. During this war, the Germans found 
no difficulty in using such amounts of other cereals 
as were at their disposal. It is only in France that 
it has been difficult or indeed almost impossible to 
reduce the bread ration, which is today practically 
what it was in peace time. The reason for this is 
deserving of more than passing mention, since it is 



164 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

imperative that we should understand the exact sit- 
uation. There is no such thing in France, prac- 
tically speaking, as domestic baking of bread. The 
bread is always purchased from the baker, it is usu- 
ally purchased for a long period of time and must 
keep well. The French are perfectly willing to 
have a bread made of mixed flour containing rye, 
barley, corn, or oat meal, but they insist that the 
cereals must be in the form of bread. Corn bread 
cannot be made in a bakery and sold. If the 
French people are to use corn, oats or rice in excess 
of the amounts that can be introduced into the loaf 
with wheat, such use must be in the home. In other 
words, the labour of preparation of rice, corn meal 
or oat meal must be imposed upon the French- 
woman. 

But this represents the imposition of a consider- 
able burden. In the first place, the Frenchwoman 
does not understand how to cook these cereals and 
she would first have to be taught how. The chil- 
dren of France do not understand the taste of these 
cereals and they would have to be taught to eat them. 
The actual time and fuel consumed in the prepara- 
tion of these foods would represent a serious sacri- 
fice. It must be clearly visualized that all of the 
able-bodied men in France are at the front, engaged 
in transportation or in the manufacture of imple- 
ments of war. The only men at home are old men. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 165 

the hundreds of thousands afflicted with tubercu- 
losis, and the hundreds of thousands incapacitated 
by wounds. The Frenchwoman is carrying on the 
agriculture and in the cities the Frenchwoman is 
carrying on all of the odds and ends of labour that 
normally fall to masculine hands. On top of this, 
is it to be regarded as possible to ask the French- 
w^oman to spend an hour in the day in the prepara- 
tion of rice, corn or oat meal? Certainly no Amer- 
ican who understands the meaning of the war can 
possibly justify such an imposition upon the women 
of France. This is more than a matter of judg- 
ment, it is a question of conscience. France has 
done much for us, this little we must do for France. 
We are short on wheat and long on other cereals. 
We are short on wheat because our wheat crops 
have been low for two years, the excess wheat of 
Australia and India is inaccessible on account of 
conditions in transportation, and in addition to this 
we have the obligation to ship increased amounts to 
Europe because the wheat crops have failed upon 
the fields of our Allies. This can be accomplished 
only by a reduced consumption of wheat and an in- 
creased consumption of other cereals. We have 
already in 30,000,000 Americans in the south an 
illustration of what should be the practice of every 
one. If the people of the north would reduce the 
consumption of wheat to the point approximating 



I 66 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

the average consumption in the south and consume 
instead the other available cereals, this would set 
free for export practically 150,000,000 bushels of 
wheat. It ought to be left open to the widest choice 
of the individual family how this substitution shall 
be effected. Some will elect to save on flour by the 
use of whole wheat bread ; others will elect to pre- 
pare bread from mixed flours; others will elect to 
use bread of the usual type, but reduce the consump- 
tion one-third and replace it with cereals. People 
who buy bread must necessarily adopt the latter 
course. It will probably be possible to evolve a 
war bread at a lower cost and including the flours of 
other cereals. There are hundreds of ways of pre- 
paring corn meal, hominy, oat meal, barley, and 
rice. Some will prefer wheatless meals, others will 
prefer wheatless days. Under these circumstances, 
there are but two explanations for failure in any 
family to replace wheat with cereals in accordance 
with the necessities of the case — these are sheer 
selfishness and disloyalty — and of these no discus- 
sion is necessary. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE SOCIOLOGY OF NUTRITION" (Continued) 

MEAT 

The amount of meat and meat products required 
in a normal mixed diet is much lower than the 
amount consumed in the United States. If the 
normal consumption of milk be maintained, the 
necessity for meat from the standpoint of intake 
of balanced proteins is much reduced. If each in- 
dividual in the United States consumes a half pint 
of milk per day, the amount of meat that may be 
regarded as necessary does not exceed two ounces 
per capita per day. If milk and dairy products are 
absent from the diet, meat ought to be increased to 
a minimum of four ounces per day. The per 
capita meat consumption in this country is some- 
where in the neighbourhood of i6o pounds per an- 
num. Contrasted with this figure, the amount de- 
nominated as advisable from the nutritional point 
of view, is only about nine-sixteenths of the pres- 
ent consumption. From the standpoint of their 
content in fat-soluble vitamine beef and mutton 

167 



1 68 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

are superior to pork. Lard and bacon are indeed 
almost devoid of the substance. A diet of white 
bread and butter is a competent diet from the 
standpoint of the fat-soluble vitamine, but a diet 
of white bread and lard is not a competent diet. 
This argument holds only for the small fraction of 
meat denominated as essential from the stand- 
point of vitamine. Mutton represents the first 
choice, pork the second, and beef the third, from the 
standpoint of economy in flesh production. By this 
is meant that a unit of mutton is produced at the 
least cost of cereals, a unit of pork second, and a 
unit of beef third. This brings to the fore an- 
other feature of milk that is invaluable, considered 
from a national standpoint. Using protein as a 
criterion, in the production of milk, beef, and pork 
under what may be regarded as standard conditions 
in this country, one-third of the protein of the feed 
of milch cows is recovered in the milk; from 15 to 
20 per cent of the protein of the swine feed is re- 
covered in the pork products; and only 10 to 15 
per cent of the protein of the cattle feed is recov- 
ered in the beef products. In other words, feed 
given to a milch cow returns during the course of 
a year three times as much protein as when fed to 
beef cattle. A good cow will produce in the course 
of a year's milk supply two or three times as much 
protein as will be contained in her flesh. As a par- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I 69 

tial offset to this from the economic point of view 
is the labour involved in the dairy as against that 
involved in the feeding of beef and swine; but 
even with this included, there is no question of the 
fact that the production of milk represents the 
highest recovery of feed units in terms of human 
food. 

A reduction in the per capita consumption of meat 
is to be recommended entirely apart from any con- 
sideration of the total protein of our diet. Nutri- 
tionally we need only two ounces of meat per per- 
son per day. Meat represents under ordinary 
conditions an expensive form of protein as com- 
pared to that of cereals, though always a cheap 
source of protein compared to that of most vegeta- 
bles, including for the most part in this country 
even the potato. As a source of protein the po- 
tato was last spring practically ten times as ex- 
pensive as meat. Our protein intake is so far 
above the needs of our body that we may without 
any question whatsoever reduce the per capita 
consumption of meat to three or four ounces per 
day without the slightest hesitation. This does 
not mean vegetarianism, but it does mean eating 
meat once or at most only twice a day. To see an 
American woman serving meat at her table three 
times a day would impress the French housewife 
as nothing less than scandalous; and this is as true 



170 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

from the nutritional as from the economic point 
of view. 

On the other hand increase in the use of fish is 
to be recommended. From the standpoint of 
vitamine fish flesh is poor; but considered in the 
diet in excess of the minimal amount of meat re- 
quired, fish is in every way equal to animal flesh, 
unit for unit of protein and fat. The use of salt 
water fish and other sea food is therefore to 
be recommended under all circumstances. Meat 
drawn from the sea is, from the standpoint of nu- 
trition, a clear gain, involving no nutritional losses 
in its production. In particular, the use of sea 
food is to be encouraged by the well-to-do. For 
large classes of our population sea food is out of 
the question on account of high price. Every 
pound of sea food consumed by the classes of means 
saves a pound of beef, mutton or pork for the con- 
sumption of the poorer classes or sets free a pound 
for exportation to our Allies. It is a mistake to 
urge simplification of the diet upon all classes. 
The classes who possess means should as far as 
possible subsist upon the rare, expensive foods, 
delicacies if you please, like oysters, lobsters, arti- 
chokes, in order that a saving may be accomplished 
in staple meats, resulting in a larger supply and a 
lower price for the poorer classes and for export. 
This does not represent favouring the wealthy. It 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I7I 

is a mere economic situation to be utilized for the 
purpose of a saving in foodstuffs. 

A comparison of the consumption of meat with 
that of dairy products indicates that of approxi- 
mately 33 per cent of the calories of our diet thus 
ingested about 19 per cent falls to meats and only 
14 per cent to dairy products. When these figures 
are contrasted with the figures for efficiency in the 
recovery of feeding units, the extent of the inver- 
sion becomes apparent. This ought to be just the 
other way around. From every point of view, it 
would be preferable to have the meat consumption 
reduced to 14 per cent and the dairy consumption 
increased to 19 per cent. There is much truth in 
the dictum of Lusk addressed to the housewives of 
New York City : " Do not buy a pound of meat 
until you have purchased three quarts of milk." 

SU(L\R 

The pre-war consumption of sugar in this coun- 
try was the highest in the world, very close to four 
ounces per day. There are four uses of sugar in 
the diet sense: (i) in the conservation of fruits; 
(2) in the cooking of food; (3) upon the table; 
and (4) in the form of sweets, using this term in 
the broadest sense to include candies, soft drinks, 
etc. In peace time sugar was a cheap article of 
food. Sugar presents no advantages over starch 



1/2 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

in the diet except in rapidity of absorption. Sugar 
is available in the muscles of a working man 15 
minutes after it is eaten while starch will not be 
available for hours. There is a craving for sugar 
that is natural in children. Sugar contributes 
enormously to the psychology of the diet and a re- 
duction in sugar, like a reduction in milk, is apt to 
so upset the cuisine as to make the diet unsatisfac- 
tory. With the fullest appreciation of the value of 
sugar in the preparation of the diet, the fact re- 
mains that the American consumption of sugar is 
nothing less than a luxurious excess and one that 
ought not to be maintained in war time. 

The necessity for a reduction in the consumption 
of sugar is based upon a sharp reduction in the 
supply available to the Allied nations. The sugar 
ration in France and England has had to be reduced 
to about two ounces. It is imperative therefore 
that the sugar ration in this country should be ar- 
bitrarily reduced or it will be difficult to supply the 
Allies with even the reduced amounts. It is not 
advisable to attempt a reduction in the use of sugar 
in the conservation of fruits, upon the table or in 
the kitchen, unless the desired result can be ob- 
tained in no other manner. The first point of re- 
duction should be in the use of candies, soft drinks, 
and such articles; the second point of reduction in 
the cutting down in table use of sugar, using less 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 173 

sugar in coffee, upon desserts, fruits, and cereals. 
If Americans will reduce their consumption of can- 
dies and soft drinks and the table use of sugar to 
the plane of peace-time consumption of sugar in 
continental Europe, we should at once reduce our 
total sugar consumption by not less than 40 per 
cent. 

Under these circumstances, appeal to the people 
of this country to reduce the per capita consump- 
tion of sugar one ounce per day cannot be regarded 
as anything less than a most reasonable injunction. 
A reduction of one ounce per capita per day will set 
free for export over 1,000,000 tons of sugar per 
annum. One of the developments of recent years 
is the multiplicity of shops devoted almost ex- 
clusively to the sale of sweets and soft drinks. 
These cater to the spoiled tastes of juveniles and 
adolescents and represent an undesirable excres- 
cence in our social development. A distinguished 
Senator of the United States once remarked that an 
army of 2,000,000 men could be conscripted be- 
tween the ages of 18 and 25 if throughout the 
United States the men who spend their time loafing 
in candy and soft drink shops and pool rooms could 
be drafted. The Germans were famous for their 
conditorei prior to the war; but the exigencies of 
war have practically compelled the elimination of 
candies, cakes, and soft drinks from the German 



174 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

dietary. This is one of the most direct measures 
of conservation available to us. 

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 

A traveler observing upon our streets the pro- 
fusion of shops in v^hich fruits and vegetables are 
displayed in the most attractive manner might infer 
that our total consumption of fruits and vegetables 
is high. Our consumption of fresh fruit is high 
and our consumption of the exotic fruits and vege- 
tables in general is relatively large; but our total 
consumption of fruits and vegetables, measured by 
their role in the diet, is low. Not over 15 per 
cent of the total calories of our diet are contributed 
by fruits and vegetables. This is due to the fact 
that we are low consumers of the staple fruits and 
vegetables. Our consumption of potato, cabbage, 
beets, and turnips is low. We consume relatively 
large amounts of string beans and green peas, but 
small amounts of mature beans and peas. The po- 
tato consumption in this country is probably year in 
and year out not 200 grams per capita per day. 

One of the most striking differences in the pro- 
ductivity of Germany and the United States is to 
be seen in the yield in potato. Within the small 
available domain of the German empire the annual 
yield of potato is 45,000,000 tons; in this whole 
country the average mean yield is 9,000,000 tons. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 175 

the difiference in favour of Germany being due 
partly to large acreage in the relative sense and 
partly to extremely heavy yields through intensive 
cultivation. Potatoes in Germany have three uses 
— as foodstuff, as stock feed, and in industry, par- 
ticularly in the manufacture of alcohol and starch. 
We do not raise potatoes for stock feed in this coun- 
try. We feed the culls to live stock only v^hen it is 
quite as convenient to do so as to throw them away. 
The fabrication of alcohol from potatoes in this 
country has never been successfully accomplished 
and potato starch is a curiosity in our trade. In the 
south the white potato is rarely consumed; in the 
north, while the potato appears regularly on the 
table of most classes once a day, and of some of 
the labouring classes three times per day, the 
amounts consumed are small. It is regarded not 
as a staple, but as an addendum in the same sense 
that a green vegetable is esteemed. The potato 
contains only 20 per cent of starch and if it is to 
form a staple in the diet it must be consumed in 
relatively large amounts. 

In war time the world over the potato has been 
surrogate for grain. Practically speaking, in a 
mixed diet five parts of potato equal one part of 
grain. Agriculturally, in terms of nutritional 
units, it is easily possible to produce five nutri- 
tional units in the form of potato to one in the form 



1/6 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

of grain from a unit piece of land. There are of 
course difficulties in the sudden expansion of the 
growing of potatoes, as the selection of seed, prep- 
aration of the soil, proper fertilization, adequate 
spraying against parasites. Nevertheless, what 
can be accomplished is already shown in the potato 
yield of this year, which is practically one-third 
more than the mean of pre-war years. The potato 
yield of this year, sweet and white combined, will 
be over 500,000,000 bushels, the equivalent of 100,- 
000,000 bushels of wheat, and therefore equal to 
a sixth of our wheat crop, whereas under average 
conditions the food value of our potato crop does 
not exceed a twelfth of the wheat crop. 

Now, these potatoes must be eaten in substitu- 
tion of grain, otherwise, the labour that was ex- 
pended as a result of an appeal to the patriotism 
of the country to produce increased foodstuffs is 
lost. The utilization of such a crop of potatoes 
brings with it problems of harvesting, storage and 
distribution, the question of tonnage being one of 
especial difficulty. Potatoes are raised intensively 
in certain sections of the country, as Maine, Michi- 
gan and eastern Colorado. Many other sections of 
the country do not raise enough for local consump- 
tion. A survey of the marketing of potatoes over 
a period of five years indicates to what a surpris- 
ing extent potatoes are shipped from one farming 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 177 

community to other farming communities. Pota- 
toes are available to enable each individual in the 
United States to consume four ounces per day in 
excess of the average consumption of our people, 
and this is urged upon all classes in all sections; 
but it is necessary for the authorities so to or- 
ganize the marketing, transportation and distribu- 
tion of potatoes as to bring the price down at least 
to that of grain when viewed from the standpoint 
of food values. 

The potato has certain particular properties in 
the diet. It is very rich in mineral matter. The 
potato contains both of the vitamines, and the pro- 
teins are more balanced than is usually the case in 
vegetable proteins. Potato starch is as digestible 
as cereal starch and the reputation possessed by the 
potato as a food tending particularly to create 
obesity is entirely unfounded. There is a very 
large wastage in the use of potato in the kitchen. 
In ordinary use this is frequently as high as 25 
or 30 per cent, and a careful supervision of the 
preparation of potatoes in the kitchen represents 
one of the best opportunities for elimination of 
waste. 

The mean consumption of leaf vegetables in 
America is low. Of cabbage, spinach, Brussels 
sprouts and the like, which are especially rich in 
the growth-stimulating substances, the American 



178 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

consumption is much too low. There are whole 
sections of our population to which these vegetables 
are unknown. Consumption of root vegetables, 
beets, turnips, carrots, is also low, except among the 
foreign born population. The Allied armies on 
the western front have had worked out for them 
what is believed to be an apparently ideal vegeta- 
ble ration. The mixture is as follows: Potato, 
40 parts; carrots, 20 parts; turnips, 20 parts; cab- 
bage, 10 parts; and onions, 10 parts. These are 
dried and the total weight reduced to about 17 parts. 
The difference in the use of vegetables is clearly 
shown in the employment of such a dried vegetable 
mixture on the two sides of the northern fighting 
lines on the west front. On the British side a day's 
ration of this means a soup prepared through the 
allowance of 100 pounds of the dried mixture to 
6000 men. When the writer calculated the food 
value of this vegetable ration he remarked that here 
was at least one good reason why the British *' Tom- 
mies '' were fighting so hard ; they were trying to 
get across the line into Belgium in order to obtain 
food supplies from the Commission for Relief in 
Belgium, — since the Tommy's individual por- 
tion of this vegetable ration has a food value of 
not over 20 calories. On the other side of the line, 
the German portion for a day of such a vegetable 
mixture represents not less than 200 calories. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 179 

Now, that is the whole situation in a nut shell. We 
use vegetables as flavouring substances. Our French 
and Italian Allies use them as sources of energy and 
food values. 

When, however, one attempts to urge upon the 
American people the consumption of more vege- 
tables, exclusive of potatoes, as sources of food- 
values, one realizes our limitations when the price 
of the unit values are calculated. Vegetables, esti- 
mated as a unit, are today in America from the 
standpoint of food values, almost the most expen- 
sive of foods; in unit cost, tomatoes almost rank 
with champagne! In order to secure material 
amounts of protein and carbohydrate from com- 
mon leaves and tubers, exclusive of the potato, it 
is necessary to consume relatively large amounts, 
and at the current American prices this becomes 
impossible to the poorest classes of our population. 
The marketing and distribution of vegetables must 
be so organized as to bring the prices within the 
range of substitution, so that when a family reduces 
the use of staples and increases the use of vegeta- 
bles it can do so at no financial loss. 

It will not be possible in all cities to effect such 
organization on account of extreme congestion of 
population. It will, for example, never be possi- 
ble for the East Side of New York to double the 
consumption of vegetables and reduce the consump- 



l8o THE FOOD PROBLEM 

tion of staples for the same outlay in money; but 
apart from the congested areas of a few of our 
largest cities it ought to be possible to accomplish 
here what has been accomplished in Europe, namely 
a reduction in the retail price of staple vegetables 
— including under this term the vegetables that can 
be kept throughout the winter under ordinary con- 
ditions of careful storage — to such a point as to 
make it possible to substitute them in the diet, with- 
out financial loss, for grains or animal products. 
Nothing indicates more clearly the inter-relation 
between the purely physiological contemplation of 
the diet and the economic factors. It is from every 
point of view desirable to increase the consumption 
of vegetables. The production of vegetables has 
already been increased to meet the expected de- 
mand ; but all of this will go for naught unless the 
crop is so handled, distributed and marketed as to 
make the substitution one that does not involve a 
financial sacrifice. Some vegetables can be stored; 
others must be canned; others must be dried. 
There must be correlation over the entire field. 
From the agricultural point of view, the question 
is important because a great deal of vegetables can 
be raised outside of what might be termed formal 
agriculture, without imposing any additional hard- 
ship to a material extent upon labour and fertilizer 
required in formal farming. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM l8l 



FATS 



Fats are contained in dairy products, meats, 
cereals and vegetables; but the subject of fat in 
the ration is so important in war time that it is 
necessary to give the subject a special consideration. 
The fat of milk contains, as previously stated, the 
indispensable growth vitamine and is therefore of 
fundamental importance in the nation's ration. 
The fat of beef and mutton contains a moderate 
amount of this substance; that of pork a much 
smaller amount, reflecting the difference in the diet 
of these animals. The vegetable oils contain little 
or none and the fat of cereals also but a small 
amount. 

But fat has other objects in a diet. Fat is in- 
dispensable in the preparation of food and, ac- 
cording to Anglo-Saxon custom, almost indispensa- 
ble in the consumption of cereals. The amount of 
fat that we have named as a reasonable minimum in 
the ration of our people is greatly exceeded in fact. 
The per capita consumption of fat in this country 
is in the neighbourhood of 3^ ounces. There is a 
tremendous disparity between the fat contained in 
food production and fat consumed. A great deal 
of the fat contained in the extra-edible parts of 
slaughtered animals is lost, not in the great packing- 
houses but in the small rural slaughtering-houses 



1 82 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

from which proceeds about 40 per cent of the meat 
of our people. The recovery of vegetable oils is 
very faulty ; we do not begin to recover for human 
food the oil contained in the various oleaginous 
seeds that grow within our borders. It is per- 
haps a fair statement to say that the fat consump- 
tion of our people is not over 50 per cent of the fat 
offered in the produce, disregarding in this calcu- 
lation the fat contained in cereals that go directly 
to the feeding of animals. Part of this fat goes 
into the manufacture of soap and into other in- 
dustrial uses; part is used in the feeding of ani- 
mals; part is lost as waste. In the domain of re- 
covery and utilization of fat lies one of the largest 
opportunities for conservation, and the present 
campaign of conservation is rightly directing most 
energetic efforts in this direction. 

Fats have become very scarce. We used to im- 
port large amounts of the oils of palm, cocoanut, 
soya, and other seeds from Africa, South America, 
and Asia. These imports have almost ceased, due 
to scarcity of tonnage. These fats were employed 
in part for the manufacture of soap, in part for the 
manufacture of cooking fats after hydrogenation 
either alone or mixed with animal fats. They were 
also employed in the manufacture of margarin. 
Now with the shutting down of importations of 
fat, it is incumbent upon us first to recover a larger 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 183 

amount of vegetable fats grown within our own 
borders, then to prevent excessive use of fat in in- 
dustry, to ehminate wasteful use of soap, and 
finally to reduce fat in the ration. The injunction 
to reduce the fat in the ration, let us say by one- 
half ounce per day, will yield a very large amount 
of fat for shipment to our Allies, to whom fat is 
more important at present than to us, since their 
fat ration, viewed as a unit, is not in excess of 
two ounces per day. The actual working out of 
such a repression in consumption will, however, in 
all probability, have a different outcome than the 
one directly expected. When the attention of our 
people is strongly extended to the subject of waste 
in fats and they are advised to reduce the consump- 
tion of animal fat one-half ounce per day, in all 
probability the result will be that the ingestion of 
fat will remain the same but one-half ounce per 
capita per day less will be wasted. This is already 
indicated in the figures for recovery of fat from 
garbage in cities that possess reduction plants. 
What one saves for the diet one loses for industry, 
so far as these cities are concerned. 

It is also necessary to effect a re-distribution of 
the several fats among the different classes of our 
people. Too much butter is consumed in one class ; 
too little in another. There is too great neglect of 
dripping fats and also an avoidance of vegetable 



184 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

oils. What is needed is more equitable distribu- 
tion of all the fats throughout the strata of society. 
Our people must be taught to limit the use of but- 
ter in time of war to table use. Butter ought not 
to be employed in cooking, but ought to be reserved 
for table use and, in particular, for children and 
adolescents. Dripping fats when properly em- 
ployed are quite as successful for most purposes in 
the kitchen. The use of lard ought to be restricted ; 
replaced, in other words, by other fats, because, to- 
gether with other pork products, it represents the 
most staple exportable form of fat. 

We must furnish our Allies with meat and fat. 
Their herds are depleted, their feeds are reduced, 
their entire agricultural productivity is greatly re- 
stricted and the result is a marked lessening in 
the products of animal husbandry. Importations 
from Australia have become practically impossible; 
those from the Argentine difficult ; and in any event 
Argentine and South America supplied very little 
of pork products. Our Allies, of course, will use 
beef drippings and mutton tallow; but the trans- 
portability and keeping qualities of lard exceed 
those of the other products and in any event it is 
more comportable to the diets of the people to 
whom fats are to be exported. The rules, there- 
fore, to be applied over the entire country run to 
the following effect: Elimination of butter from 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 185 

the kitchen; restriction of butter to table use, 
especially for children and adolescents; limitation 
in the use of lard, bacon and fats; increase in the 
use of beef drippings and increase in the use of 
vegetable oils in the preparation of food. Esti- 
mated by their food value in the ordinary sense of 
the term, all these fats are equivalent as food. 
Variation in use represents mere difference in taste, 
and it is necessary during the war to curb the taste 
for butter, lard and bacon and to cultivate the taste 
for vegetable oils. 

One of the particular values of fat in the diet is 
prolongation of the act of digestion; this has a 
sociological value because it is of direct influence 
on the consciousness of alimentation. Cereals con- 
sumed without fat are much more rapidly digested 
than when eaten with fat. A breakfast of 600 
calories of bread and jam will be more rapidly di- 
gested than a breakfast of 600 calories of bread and 
butter. Since the sensation of hunger is con- 
nected with the termination of the digestion of the 
previous meal, the individual whose diet is low in 
fat, even though it is high in calories and protein, 
will feel under-fed. Now the sensation of under- 
feeding, the lack of satisfaction, the early return 
of the appetite after a meal, when it occurs in a 
population, inevitably leads to unrest. The lack of 
fats in the German diet is the principal cause for 



I 86 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

complaint against the diet. Even when, as in some 
sections of Germany, the diet was adequate in 
calories and protein derived from bread, potatoes 
and other vegetables, but almost devoid of fat, it 
did not give satisfaction. This lesson must not be 
overlooked in our cities. It is imperatively neces- 
sary that the fat supply of the working classes in 
the large American cities be maintained. Other- 
wise, conditions of unrest will inevitably arise, re- 
flecting the physiological fact of the too rapid ac- 
complishment of the act of digestion as a result 
of deficiency of fat in the diet. 

TABLE BEVERAGES 

We are entirely dependent upon importation for 
tea, coffee, cocoa and chocolate. The importance 
of these table beverages is very slight in the indi- 
vidual sense but it is large in the population viewed 
as a whole. They contain no nutrients. They do, 
however, contain substances, like caffeine, that are 
apparently real stimulants. It is not probable that 
the majority of people are dependent upon the 
stimulating action of these alkaloids and that this 
dependence represents the basis of our desire for 
such beverages. It is more probable that the bev- 
erages owe their place in public esteem to psycho- 
logical qualities. A beverage at a meal is a prac- 
tical necessity, all proponents of long mastication 



THE FOOD PROBLEM ' 1 8/ 

without fluids to the contrary. A warm drink at 
meals is in particular grateful to the majority of 
people. These substances have pleasant tastes and 
aromas. They serve also as a vehicle for the 
taking of sugar. To a very large number of peo- 
ple a meal will appear incomplete in the absence of 
one of these beverages. This is particularly true 
in the working classes. Under these circumstances, 
deprivation leads to dissatisfaction and unrest. 
When these articles disappear, the people at once 
seek substitutes and all manner of leaves, herbs, 
plants, grains, roots and other substances are 
brought out to supply a beverage that can be taken 
warm with the meals, that possesses taste and 
aroma, and fulfils in a partial sense the psycho- 
logical contribution of the normal table beverage. 
Now the persistence with which a people deprived 
of tea, coffee, cocoa and chocolate seek substitutes 
indicates the importance of these beverages in the 
diet and the necessity for maintaining them, cer- 
tainly with the uneducated classes, if unrest and 
dissatisfaction are to be avoided. 

GARBAGE 

Directly connected with the problem of the utili- 
zation of food is the question of garbage. In the 
past the public point of view towards garbage was 
summed up in the words : *' Get it out of the way." 



1 88 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

A few years ago cities began to install reduction 
plants for the recovery of the products of garbage 
that had an industrial value. A survey of the situ- 
ation indicates the following recommendations: 

(i) In the collection of garbage, inorganic gar- 
bage should be separated from organic garbage. 
In other words, ashes, glass, and street refuse 
should be separated from garbage of the kitchen 
and table, and from the very considerable garbage 
collected from wholesale and retail shops that deal 
in perishable foodstuffs. 

(2) Organic garbage should not be subjected to 
incineration. It contains two elements of impor- 
tance that under practically all circumstances can 
be advantageously used, fat and protein. In large 
cities regular reduction plants are employed that 
produce three end-products: fat, a protein-contain- 
ing fraction that is comparable to tankage, and a 
residue that is of lesser value. In smaller cities it 
is often of advantage to extract the fat only, disre- 
garding the other contents. In still smaller cities 
it does not pay to extract the fat, but it does pay 
to collect the organic garbage, dry it, sterilize it, 
pack it into briquettes or powder it. If the col- 
lections are made in a proper and cleanly manner 
and decomposition is not later permitted, the feed 
value of city garbage is high. The powder con- 
taining the dried residue of mixed city garbage. 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 189 

from which inorganic collections have been ex- 
cluded, will run high in protein and fat. Such a 
powder makes an excellent feed for poultry, swine 
or dairy cattle, depending in part upon the com- 
position. 

In cities where regular reduction plants are in 
operation the fats recovered are used primarily for 
the manufacture of soap, though it is possible also 
to use these fats in the feeding of domesticated 
animals. 

The whole subject of the utilization of garbage 
in the United States is a problem in chemical en- 
gineering, and is to be approached and solved only 
in this way. A campaign of education directed 
against waste in foodstuffs produces very remark- 
able reduction in the garbage. During the past four 
months the garbage of certain cities where an in- 
tensive campaign against waste has been conducted 
has been reduced about 12 per cent, so far as com- 
ponents derived from the kitchen and the table are 
concerned. The reduction in waste grease has 
amounted to 29 per cent. Reduction and incinera- 
tion plants that previously operated day and night, 
now operate only through a portion of the day. 
There will always be a certain garbage that cannot 
be avoided; and for this inevitable garbage, the 
problem of recovery as an engineering feat remains 
always and must be solved here, as it has been largely 



190 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

solved in Germany during the war, if we are to suc- 
ceed in the conservation of our resources. People 
must be brought to see that they have the choice to a 
certain extent between repression in waste and re- 
pression in eating; and with this fully understood, 
repression will be transferred to waste and will show 
at once in the collection of garbage. 

The common American attitude towards garbage 
as a source of disease is erroneous. Naturally 
when a community is so slovenly as to dump its 
ashes, tin cans, broken glass, refuse vegetables, 
meats, and everything else, including sometimes 
even its sewage, on the lowlands, to undergo de- 
composition and drying, to be blown about by the 
winds, an eye-sore to every one and an offence to 
the nostrils, people regard the word " garbage " as 
almost synonymous with ^^ disease." Under these 
circumstances it is not to be wondered at that the 
public believes incineration is the correct solution 
of the problem. Now this is of course entirely 
unscientific and represents the verdict of prejudice 
over efficiency. At the time that excess vegetables 
in retail shops, kitchen waste and table scraps leave 
the places where they originate, they are hygien- 
ically clean. Undergoing simple decomposition 
does not render them hygienically unclean, except 
for human consumption. Even considerable de- 
grees of decomposition do not render the material 



THE FOOD PROBLEM IQI 

unfit for animal food if it is later dried and steril- 
ized; but decomposition does represent economic 
loss always and is therefore to be avoided. 

If every community of any appreciable size in 
the United States installs an equipment for the dis- 
position of its garbage through reduction and 
utilization, not only would there be enormous sav- 
ings accomiplished in food and feed units but there 
would be marked improvement in the aesthetic 
appearances of unoccupied land surrounding Ameri- 
can communities. For the smaller cities the prob- 
lem of profitable recovery is difficult of solution. 
Up to the present there is no profit in garbage re- 
covery in cities of under 50,000 inhabitants, but 
this in itself does not justify complete neglect of 
garbage. It is worth while to dispose of garbage 
properly even at a loss. We spend a great deal of 
money for public parks, for the recreation of the 
people and in a hundred other ways that do not 
bring a return in money but do bring a return in 
elevation of the surroundings of life. Certainly 
the handling of garbage belongs with these other 
public functions. We do not attempt to make 
money out of sewage in the American city. The 
disposition of garbage, where it can not be ac- 
complished with commercial profit, ought to be 
ranked with the disposition of sewage; and until 
this point of view is obtained we shall find not only 



192 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

that garbage represents a large loss in food and 
feed units but represents also a reflection upon our 
civic efficiency. 

REGIONAL RATIONS 

One of the fundamental principles in the food 
control of a people at war is the avoidance of the 
use of powers conferred in the exigency to ac- 
complish anything else than the alleviation of nu- 
tritional problems arising as a result of the war. 
A food administration in a country at war must 
necessarily be endowed with extremely wide pow- 
ers, powers even including those of repression of 
consumption of particular articles. The wide 
powers granted to the food administration in time 
of war are granted solely for the protection of 
society against the results of war; they are not 
intended to be used for the advancement of ideas, 
no matter how meritorious, whose application in 
no wise relates to the war-time exigency. In other 
words, national problems in diet of peace time must 
not be solved through coercion in war. This is a 
field for education and not for legislation. 

In a small country like Germany or France it is 
possible to place the entire population upon a fixed 
ration to be applied to all classes. This is not pos- 
sible in the United States, nor is it desirable, and 
for two reasons. In the first place the natural diet 



THE FOOD PROBLEM I93 

of different sections is widely variant. A traveller 
transported from the plains of Texas to the hills 
of New England would regard himself dietetically 
in a foreign country. The diet and preparation 
of food in the German and Swedish agricultural 
classes of the Middle West are entirely different 
from those of the Mediterranean immigrants in 
California. While the facilities of modern trans- 
portation have made it possible for people of means 
to select a diet that practically represents the pro- 
duction of the world, nevertheless, the regional in- 
fluences of production upon the diet of a people is 
still heavy. Viewed physiologically this state of 
affairs is both desirable and undesirable; but there 
can be no question that in the exigency of war 
time the independence of the population of a cer- 
tain region represents a factor of importance. 

In the present condition of transportation in the 
United States it would be impossible to ship food 
about in such a fashion as to give the same diet to 
people of each of our states. Transportation being 
such an important factor, it becomes imperative for 
each State to subsist to as large an extent as pos- 
sible upon the produce of that State. Certain 
States, for example, Georgia, had until within a 
few years pursued so one-sided an agriculture in 
the production of cotton as to have been a food- 
importing State in the same sense almost that New 



194 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

York City was a food-importing city. This may 
have been efificiency in peace time, since each area 
produced the crops to which it was most fitted, — 
although there is a wide difference of opinion upon 
this point. It is certainly not at all a system of 
efificiency in war time. This was the basis for the 
appeal sent out by the President early this year, 
calling upon the people to produce more largely in 
foodstuffs in order to render themselves less de- 
pendent upon other states. 

The tremendous element of trade in connec- 
tion with the nutrition of a complex people can- 
not be disregarded in time of war. For example, 
the flour mills of Kansas City have a regular trade 
in the country around Buffalo and the Buffalo mills 
have a regular trade in the country around Kansas 
City. Now in war time such a state of affairs is 
absurd. The centralization of the slaughter of 
meat animals in a few large cities may be efficient 
in time of peace; but decentralization in the 
slaughter of domesticated animals, if proper in- 
spection can be maintained, would be unquestion- 
ably better in time of war. It is not possible in 
time of war to alter the normal customs to more 
than a certain extent; but it is imperative under 
present conditions of transportation that the people 
of each State realize fully the importance of this 
problem, restrict themselves in so far as it may be 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 195 

possible to the produce of their own State, and so 
long as the war lasts increase the local production 
of foodstuffs in order to render themselves inde- 
pendent of importations through the channels of 
trade. 

Of course, this is an injury to the trade, but an 
injury to trade that is unavoidable in war time and 
one counterbalanced by gain to the people as a 
whole. Profit in trade is directly proportional to 
the multiplicity of transactions. Efficiency in war 
time is directly proportional to simplicity of trans- 
actions. A survey of the regulations and experi- 
ence of the European countries indicates that with 
each month as the war life becomes more and more 
direct, the manipulations of trade become reduced 
in number and the factors of trade, as contrasted 
with production and consumption, become more and 
more relegated to the background. 

'' Business as usual " is an impossible slogan in 
war time, since '' business as usual " means a 
multiplicity of trade operations that are not de- 
signed to secure the nutrition of the people in the 
simplest and most direct manner and at the least 
expense — which is the role of a food administra- 
tion in war time. The same statement holds for 
the relations of trade in articles of agricultural 
production. In everything that comes to the farm 
in the form of fertilizer, seed, and agricultural 



196 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

implements, and goes from the farm in the form 
of crops and live stock, the application of the rule, 
'' business as usual," leads to an inefficiency, under 
the exigency of war time, that has its effect not only 
on the consumer but also on the producer. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GRAIN AND ALCOHOL 

Our Allies and the enemy countries have re- 
stricted the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. 
The neutrals surrounding the Central Empires have 
also restricted the manufacture of alcoholic bev- 
erages. The inevitable conclusion is that the 
manufacture of these beverages represents a waste 
in grains that must be curtailed in war time. 
Naturally the same proposition was advanced in 
our country in the earliest days of the campaign for 
the restriction of waste. The situations are some- 
what different, in that the countries in Europe are 
grain-importing countries while we are a grain- 
exporting country. Whenever our people are ap- 
pealed to for reduction of waste, it is retorted that 
one waste directly under governmental control lies 
in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. To this 
the reply is made by the trade in alcoholic beverages 
that the income derived therefrom more than com- 
pensates for the amount of grain consumed. 

A judicial survey of the problem indicates that 
there are several factors that must be separated and 

197 



198 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

clearly evaluated: (i) The loss in grain that at- 
tends the manufacture of alcoholic beverages 
viewed as a total process, a problem in nutrition; 
(2) the loss of revenue that v^ould attend the enact- 
ment of prohibition; (3) the purely ethical motives 
that formed the basis for the pre-v^ar prohibition 
movement; (4) the bearing of alcoholism upon na- 
tional efficiency in war time as a war-time prob- 
lem; and (5) the relations of alcohol as a narcotic 
to the stress of an intensive warfare. 

For us at this place the nutritional question in- 
volved in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages 
is alone to be considered. There has been a great 
deal of misapprehension concerning this, as was to 
have been expected when a peace-time problem has 
been carried over into war time. On the part of 
the proponents of prohibition exaggerated state- 
ments of the nutritional units concerned in the 
manufacture of alcoholic beverages have been widely 
circulated. On the other hand, certain interests 
concerned with the manufacture of alcoholic bev- 
erages have endeavoured to make it appear that a 
gain in nutritional units is accomplished through the 
fermentation of grain. The data are available to 
every one and the interpretation clear. Three sen- 
tences suffice to summarize the scientific conclusions : 

(i) The grains employed in the manufacture of 
alcoholic beverages are predominatingly feed grains 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 199 

and not bread grains, and the total amount em- 
ployed represents on an average not much over 2 
per cent of the total grain production; 

(2) If the grains devoted to the manufacture 
of alcoholic beverages be devoted to the feeding of 
domesticated animals, there will be little gain as 
compared to the results when the same grains are 
used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages and 
the spent residues devoted to the feeding of live 
stock ; 

(3) There would be a large gain if the grains 
devoted to the manufacture of alcoholic beverages 
should be devoted directly to the feeding of human 
beings. 

The following paragraphs will make these rela- 
tions clear. During the fiscal year ending June 
30, 19 16, the materials required for the manufac- 
ture of distilled spirits were in round figures as 
follows, in bushels : Malt, 4 million ; corn, 32 mil- 
lion; rye, 3 million; oats, wheat and other cereals 
up to a total of 39,500,000 bushels. This grain is 
all supposed to be grain of good quality but it is 
not necessarily grain of millable quality. All of 
these grains are of course of quality fit for the 
feeding of domesticated animals. In addition, 
molasses was used to the extent of over 152,000,000 
gallons. The money value of these ingredients was 
somewhere in the neighbourhood of $44,000,000. 



200 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

The money value of the distillers' spent grains was 
somewhere in the neighbourhood of $9,000,000. 
These figures represent a large increase over the 
figures of the previous year, but this increase was 
due principally to an augmented demand for alco- 
hol used in war industries. 

An analysis of the data indicates that of the 
total production, 249,000,000 gallons, of distilled 
spirits in 19 16, some 123,000,000 gallons were 
manufactured for purposes of human consump- 
tion, leaving 126,000,000 gallons that were de- 
voted to technical use in industry, arts and the 
sciences. With the continuation of the war it 
is clear that our production of industrial alco- 
hol must be progressively augmented. We are 
unable to hope that in the immediate future there 
will be any reduction in the utilization of grains 
for the manufacture of industrial spirits. The 
whisky now in bond could be redistilled — over 
200,000,000 gallons were in the bonded ware- 
houses in June, 19 17. The molasses used in the 
manufacture of distilled spirits was in the past al- 
ways molasses of feeding grade and not of the 
quality employed as human food. During the past 
year, however, owing to conditions in the manu- 
facture of sugar, a great deal of molasses entirely 
fit for human consumption was used in distilleries. 

We face the necessity of securing non-edible ma- 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 201 

terials from which alcohol may be prepared. Many 
substances are available to a greater or less extent 
in different portions of the country, were the meth- 
ods of utilization developed as they have been 
abroad. Sweet and white potatoes, kafircorn and 
sorghum grains ought to be included. In Germany 
the manufacture of alcohol from potato has been 
successfully practised for a long time and the ex- 
cess sweet and white potatoes of this country would 
yield a large amount of alcohol. Sugar beet pulp, 
now utilized as a stock feed, also yields alcohol 
under appropriate processing, and the same is true 
of the residues of the sugar cane. The sulphite 
liquors of pulp mills, straw and sawdust can all be 
employed for the manufacture of alcohol and are 
indeed so employed in this country on a small 
scale. Garbage represents a source of carbohy- 
drate from which alcohol may be produced. Un- 
fortunately the development of processes for the 
manufacture of alcohol from other substances than 
grain and molasses is in its very beginning in this 
country, and it does not seem possible to hope for 
great expansion in these directions in the immediate 
future. Under these circumstances, we fear that 
during the next year more grain will be employed 
in the manufacture of alcohol for industrial pur- 
poses than was last year employed in the manufac- 
ture of distilled spirits for beverages and industrial 



202 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

purposes combined. If the manufacture of alcohol 
be permitted to such distilleries only as are equipped 
to dry and market the spent grains the losses will be 
minimal. 

Corn is our heaviest crop and corn is the grain 
most used in the manufacture of whisky. If this 
corn were used in feeding live stock what would be 
the gain over the use of corn employed in the manu- 
facture of whisky? It is impossible to answer the 
question by a single statement or figure on account 
of a necessary difficulty in the selection of a cri- 
terion. One must either judge from the standpoint 
of total energy values or from the standpoint 
of the gain in a single all-important constituent, 
protein. Decision from the standpoint of protein 
is easy; from the standpoint of total energy, diffi- 
cult, or, indeed, impossible. 

The use of protein as a criterion in deciding the 
question is made all the more advantageous by the 
fact that in the feeding of live stock in this country 
protein is a much more important factor than 
carbohydrate or pure energy-producing material. 
Now when corn is converted into whisky all of the 
protein remains in the distillers' grains. If these 
were all recovered, dried and used as a stock feed, 
they would contain all of the original protein value 
of the grain. There are well-grounded objections 
to the use of distillers' slops and moist distillers' 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 2O3 

grains for feeding; but when distillers' grains are 
dried and heated these objections disappear, so that 
used as a concentrate in connection with other 
feeds, dried distillers' grains form a first-grade 
feeding-stuff. 

The real question then becomes: What propor- 
tion of distillers' grains are employed as stock feed? 
It is impossible to obtain accurate figures. With the 
ascending price of cattle feed, the distillers can 
afford to recover their spent grains more carefully, 
and prepare them for the market by drying. As a 
matter of fact they are becoming more and more 
widely used as ingredients of mixed stock feeds. 
Unquestionably there is still loss in connection with 
small distilleries lying in more or less out of the 
way localities. Nevertheless, viewing the matter 
as a whole, it is clear that in the conversion of 
corn into whisky, there need be little loss of nutri- 
ent units from the standpoint of conservation. If 
the particular corn used in the manufacture of 
whisky were used instead as human food there 
would be a large gain, as will be later shown; but 
when one realizes that the consumption of corn as 
human food in this country is less than lo per cent 
of the available crop, even this statement of the ar- 
gument is somewhat forced. 

During the fiscal year ending June 30, 191 6, 
barley to the extent of over 52,000,000 bushels was 



204 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

converted into malt for use in the manufacture of 
beer, including in this term all brewed beverages. 
In addition to this some 13,000,000 bushels of corn, 
including grits and cerealine, and 2,500,000 bushels 
of rice were also employed. The amount of sugar 
used is not recorded. This does not represent the 
total amount of barley converted into malt. There 
was a relatively heavy export and malt is also em- 
ployed to a considerable extent by bakers and in 
various technical industries. 

Now this amount represents from a third to a 
fourth of the whole of the ordinary crop of barley 
in our country. Barley in the United States is 
largely a feed grain, the manufacture of barley 
flour being practically unknown before the war. A 
certain amount of pearled barley and barley prep- 
arations were used in the diet of children and of the 
sick, and barley breakfast foods have also appeared 
upon the market. But barley in the distant past 
was regarded as a bread grain. In the pre-war 
period barley was used for bread in Russia, Sweden 
and Norway, and to some extent in Germany, 
where it was also widely consumed in the state of 
pearled barley. There is a common notion with 
American stockmen that barley has a low nutritive 
value as a feed for domesticated animals. This is 
entirely untrue. Barley, largely used either as 
barley offal or as the crushed grain, is an excellent 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 20$ 

concentrated feeding-stuff, and, in Denmark and 
Germany, where the feeding of domesticated ani- 
mals has been much more specialized than in this 
country, barley is a favourite feeding grain, par- 
ticularly for swine. 

The rice used in the manufacture of beer is in 
large part not such rice as could be sold for table 
rice, consisting more of broken rice, screenings and 
uneven grades that, perfectly good in themselves, 
are excluded by the standards of the market. Grits 
and cerealine also, while perfectly good products, 
are not high grade in market classification. If 
these grains were not employed in the manufacture 
of beer they would probably be used as feed for 
domesticated animals or poultry. If the barley 
employed in the manufacture of beer were used for 
animal feed directly there would be little gain in 
the exchange. About 15 per cent of the protein 
of the barley re-appears in the beer. A certain 
percentage, let us say, 10 per cent, is contained in 
the yeast. A certain percentage is in the sprouts 
and the remainder in the brewers' grains. 

The sprouts are used largely in the manufacture 
of yeast for bread-making and also in other tech- 
nical industries, though employed to some extent 
as a high-grade stock feed. The yeast ought to be 
entirely saved and used as stock feed, and in the best 
breweries it is not wasted. In many smaller brew- 



206 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

eries, however, there is a large waste in yeast. 
The dried brewers' grains proceeding from a unit 
of malt after the manufacture of beer is completed 
contain the largest fraction of the protein of the 
original barley. In view of the present price of 
feed it must be assumed that there is little wastage 
in spent grains and sprouts. Assuming that this 
wastage is as much as lo per cent, it is apparent 
that domesticated animals receive at present about 
two-thirds of the protein contained in the original 
barley and that of the remainder the largest frac- 
tion goes into human food in the form of beer and 
in bread. Obviously there is, from the nutritional 
point of view, little loss when barley is employed 
in the manufacture of beer and the residues fed to 
domesticated animals contrasted with the results of 
direct feeding of the barley to animals. 

A very different result however is obtained when 
the barley is used as human food. Transfer of 
barley from the brewery to the flour mill involves 
a gain in nutritive units for human consumption 
and a loss for domesticated animals. The gain 
and loss are not directly comparable, but the re- 
lations may be made clear. In accordance with the 
experience of European countries during this war, 
barley flour represents one of the best flours for ad- 
mixture with wheat flour in the production of mixed 
flour bread. The best results are obtained, with 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 20/ 

the lowest alteration in the bread-making qualities 
of the mixture, and with the least detectable change 
in taste of the bread an^ retention of the keeping 
qualities of the flour, when the barley is milled to 
not more than a 60 per cent extraction. If the 
barley were so milled, and the flour were employed 
as human food and the offal used as stock feed, 
about one-third of the protein would be in the grain 
offal and two-thirds in the flour. If the grain offal 
were fed under standard conditions to dairy cattle, 
the protein would be recovered to an extent of about 
30 to 35 per cent; if fed to pork the protein would 
be recovered to an extent of about 25 per cent under 
favourable conditions. These same coefficients must 
be applied to the barley when used in the manu- 
facture of beer and the residues used as stock feed. 
On the one side of the comparison, then, we have 
the food units in the barley flour plus the food units 
obtained in milk, pork or beef as the result of feed- 
ing of the barley offal. On the other side of the 
comparison is the food unit in the beer plus the food 
units obtained in milk, pork and beef as the result 
of feeding the brewers' grains, sprouts, and yeast. 
The recoveries are in each instance highest in the 
case of milk and lowest in the case of beef. When 
the protein values of 50,000,000 bushels of barley 
are thus calculated, on the basis of standard feed- 
ing values and assuming that the grains are em- 



208 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

ployed to the same extent both in the feeding of cat- 
tle and of swine, the gain in protein as human food- 
stuff when the barley is used in the manufacture of 
flour instead of in the manufacture of beer would 
amount to somewhere between 80,000,000 and 100,- 
000,000 pounds of protein. This amount of pro- 
tein is sufficient to meet the annual protein require- 
ments of about 2,500,000 people. Exported to 
France and expressed in terms of bread, the Ameri- 
can barley used in the manufacture of beer last 
year was equal to the normal bread ration of 7,000,- 
000 people. This figure becomes more impressive 
when we recall that the beer here cannot be applied 
to a per capita ration. 

The gain, however, in another sense would be 
still larger. What our Allies need is flour, and the 
flour of barley is entirely acceptable to them and 
can be mixed with wheat flour in the proportion of 
four to one. The loss in feed protein involved in 
the use of this barley as food is so small in con- 
trast to our production of corn, oats, beans, cow- 
peas, cottonseed cake, linseed cake, and velvet beans 
as to fall outside of all consideration in the quanti- 
tative sense. Calculated in terms of milk, the pro- 
tein value of brewers' grains is worth about 150,- 
000,000 gallons of milk per annum. This, while 
a large figure, does not loom large against some 
8,000,000,000 gallons of milk that are supposed to 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 2O9 

be produced annually in this country. On the 
Other hand, brewers' grains are not used evenly 
throughout the country in a geographical sense, 
but are used to a large extent in certain zones. In 
Wisconsin and Illinois and in the eastern dairy 
territory, the loss of dried brewers' grains would 
embarrass the feeding operations unless other pro- 
teins were made available. Such proteins, how- 
ever can be made freely available; their utilization 
is merely a question of organization on the part of 
national and state departments of agriculture. 

From all this it can be seen that there is not 
much occasion for discussion of grain and alcohol 
from the food-saving point of view, unless the peo- 
ple are prepared either to consume the barley flour 
themselves or to export this barley flour to our 
Allies. Merely to cease the manufacture of beer 
without provision for the utilization of the barley 
flour would accomplish almost nothing. The bar- 
ley would simply remain as a slight addition to the 
stock of feed grains and little conservation would 
have been accomplished. If, however, the barley 
were milled, the flour would represent a very ma- 
terial addition of human food, an addition much 
needed because of the present low stock and short 
crop of wheat. 



CONCLUSION 

PATRIOTISM AND FOOD 

Patriotism and food ! Winning a world war 
by eating corn and chicken instead of wheat and 
beef! It will take much education to get this 
point of view. An army of food-savers does not 
appeal to the imagination at first consideration. 
But remember the large words of M. Bloch: 
''That is the future of war — not fighting but 
famine/' 

Germany is fighting not only with armies of men 
in field-grey but with greater armies of un-uni- 
formed men, women and children; the civilian 
armies of workers and food-savers. Germany is 
fighting as a whole people, a whole nation mobilized. 
Germany is fighting to win a war that was to have 
been all conquest and glory, and is now all Durch- 
halten. In this fighting and Durchhalten Germany 
has lifted food to all the importance that M. Bloch 
prophesied for it. She is struggling to hold off 
famine from herself and to assure famine for her 
enemies. Germany controls food, saves food, 
stretches food, as no nation ever did before. That 
she has not already been beaten is due no less to her 

2IO 



THE FOOD PROBLEM 211 

food organization than to her fighting organiza- 
tion. She has put patriotism and food together. 
So must we. 

It is a time of rare and glorious opportunity; a 
time in which prosaic business and industry may be 
hfted up to the high plane of national service. 
And it is being so conceived in many quarters. 
The editor of a millers' journal puts it well for his 
miller and baker readers when he says : " He who 
grinds a barrel of flour or makes a loaf of bread to 
the glory and the good of the nation, forgetful of 
self, performs his duty in a spirit of devotion equal 
in its way to that of him who goes forth to actual 
battle.'' 

And just as business and industry can perform 
their national service by putting patriotism and 
food together, so can we who serve our households 
and public dining-rooms; and so also can we who 
eat — in a word, all of us. There is no magic 
way to making food win the war. It can be done 
but in one way, the way of voluntary and eager 
resolution and action of the whole people, each 
group and each person according to the measure 
of his opportunity and means; a matter of daily 
personal service on every farm, in all the places 
through which pass the great food masses, and, 
finally, in every little shop and every kitchen and at 
every table in the land. 



212 THE FOOD PROBLEM 

It is not a sordid association, patriotism and food. 
It can be as fine as the spirit of democracy and as 
ennobling as the struggle for democracy. For it is, 
in truth, in these days an essential part of each. If 
we cannot organize our effort in this world crisis 
by the individual initiative, spirit and consent of 
the people, then democracy is a faith on which we 
cannot stand. For autocracy has shown that it 
can organize its effort; it does it by imposing or- 
ganization by force, from the top. We must do 
it from the bottom, and voluntarily. The admin- 
istration of food is a test of what our form of 
government is worth. If success in it did no more 
than insure its immediate aim, providing our Allies 
with food, it would be wholly worth while. But 
it will do more than that; it will prove our faith 
in ourselves. 



Table of Equivalents of Metric and English 
Measures 





Kilogram 


2.2 lbs. 




Gram 




28.35 ^^- ^^^' 




One ounce 


— 28.35 grams 




Litre 


.88 QUART 




Metric ton 


= 2,204.85 LBS. 




Hectare 


= 2.471 ACRES 




Hundredweight 


= 112 LBS. 




Quintal 


= 220 LBS. 




Quarter (of 






WHEAT OR corn) 


= 480 LBS. 



n. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



213 



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